THL FREE MAN AND TBE SOLDIER 





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THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER. 

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THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 



THE FREE MAN 
AND THE SOLDIER 

ESSAYS ON THE RECONCILIATION OF 
LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 



BY 

RALPH BARTON PERRY 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



T5« 



Copyright, 1916, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published August, 1916 




AUG3019to 




©CI,A437454 



AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
TO 

S. B. P. 



PREFACE 

The sort of truth that is in most danger of 
getting itself ignored is the whole truth. It is 
usually too monotonously obvious to attract 
attention, too insipid to lend a relish to con- 
versation, and too dull to point a paragraph. 
Half-truths hold the stage, and divide the al- 
legiance of mankind among them. Thus, instead 
of agreeing that we are somewhere in the middle 
of progress, with something done and something 
yet to do, opinion is divided between the old and 
the young, between those who believe that the 
world is rapidly approaching its end and those 
who believe that it has just begun. Optimist 
and pessimist, anarchist and reactionary, atheist 
and bigot, feminist and misogynist, these are 
some of the character-parts which the human 
mind admires and loves to assume. The present 
crisis in human affairs has given a fearful urgency 
to two great human problems. First, how shall 
one be secure and yet peaceful? Second, how 
shall we act in concert and yet remain free in- 



viii PREFACE 

dividuals? In each case the solution of the 
problem requires the reconciliation of two in- 
dispensable values. And yet men divide them- 
selves into parties and become blind to one of 
these values through excess of zeal for the other. 
Thus militarists for security's sake abandon the 
ideal of peace, and pacifists for the sake of peace 
shut their eyes to violence and danger. Or in- 
dividualists in the name pf freedom protest 
against organization and authority; while na- 
tionalists from love of country forget that no 
cotmtry is worthy of being loved that is not the 
home of independent and happy individuals. 
Thus the solid truth escapes notice, from too 
much looking at one or another of its flat sur- 
faces. Even if the truth be hard to win, it is 
worth something to see it on both sides and to 
comprehend its dimensions. Whatever be sound 
policy in the present crisis it must provide a 
way by which liberty and peace shall be con- 
sistent with solidarity and strength; by which 
a man may take his place as a soldier in the 
ranks, and yet remain free. 

Essays I, II, IV, and V have appeared in part 
in The New Republic ; VI and XI in The Atlantic 
Monthly; VII in The International Journal of 



PREFACE ix 

Ethics ; VIII in The New York Times ; X in The 
Forum ; and XII in Harper^ s Weekly. My thanks 
are due to the editors of these periodicals for per- 
mission to reprint. 

Ralph Barton Perry. 

Cambridge, Mass.^ June 15, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Preface vii 

I. The Free Man and the Soldier . . 3 

II. The Vigil of Arms 15 

III. The Tolerant Nation 44 

rv. Impressions of a Plattsburg Recruit . 73 

V. The Fact of War and the Hope of Peace S$ 

VI. What Is Worth Fighting For? ... 95 

VII. Non-Resistance and the Present War 123 

VIII. Who is Responsible? 138 

IX. The University and the Individual . . 152 

X. Education for Freedom 176 

XI. The Useless Virtues . . . . . .195 

XII. The Condescending Man and the Ob- 
structive Woman 214 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

WHEN General Miles on a recent occasion 
expressed himself as opposed to universal 
military service, he was quoted as saying that 
the American people would never allow them- 
selves to be "Prussianized." It is customary to 
say that if a people is to be trained to arms they 
must become spiritually or fundamentally "regi- 
mented." This dictum has usually passed un- 
challenged. It is regarded as a sort of axiom, 
which even the extremest advocates of prepared- 
ness are rarely bold enough to deny. And yet 
curiously enough, even the superficial facts are 
against it. Thus, whatever we mean by that 
individualism which we prize, we do not look to 
China for examples of it. China, whether justly 
or unjustly, signifies to Occidental minds that 
very uniformity and stagnation which points the 
moral, and yet China is notable among the na- 
tions for its lack of military discipline. France, 
on the other hand, was for centuries the most 

3 



4 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

soldierly nation of Europe, and has in recent 
years made the most exacting military demands 
upon her citizens. Yet France remains pre- 
eminently liberal and cosmopolitan. France is 
a perpetual source of novelty, of modernisms and 
futurisms, of those departures from tradition and 
type, those excesses and daring conceits which 
scandahze and inspire, and which spring from a 
free mind roaming at large in its world. 

What shall we say of ourselves ? We have been 
let alone for haK a century. No drill-master has 
taught us to keep aHgnments and intervals or 
to step a regulation thirty inches. No bugle- 
call has intruded upon our private affairs and 
summoned us to march the same road. We have 
not been swept by collective passion or articu- 
lated in any smooth-working mechanism. But 
what have we been doing? Have we become in- 
dividuals ? Are we eminent among the nations as 
a race of ample personalities? Are our laboring 
men notable for self-respect and self-sufficiency? 
Does our leisured class breed creative genius, 
or our poHtical life leadership and constructive 
statesmanship ? What, then, is this individualism 
which we are so afraid to lose? 

Let us be willing to say of ourselves what we 
would not unnaturally resent if it were uttered 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 5 

by an alien critic. We are a bit sodden, a bit too 
fond of what money will buy. We are not guilt- 
less of hiring an army in order to enjoy our Cartha- 
ginian ease. We enjoy irresponsibility as the 
child enjoys it. Some few, having a day full of 
"engagements" and pastimes, would like to be 
left uninterrupted. The great majority are sol- 
aced by the hope of rising in life to the same 
privilege or are embittered by their exclusion 
from it. The absence of discipline has not, then, 
perfected us as individuals, though it may have 
tolerated our selfishness and spread wide the 
envious hope of making a fortune. Indeed, the 
absence of a more conscious and rational col- 
lectivism has rendered us peculiarly defenseless 
against factional solidarities, against vogues and 
fads, against contagious sentimentaHties and un- 
scrupulous demagoguery. We are notoriously 
afraid of the mass opinion that we help to create. 
We have the greatest respect for the normal, and 
are quick to catch and echo the popular note. 
There are so many ears to the ground that there 
is often nothing to hear except the confused 
noise created by so much listening. 

When we turn to our pohtical liberties, on the 
other hand, we can speak with greater confidence. ' 
Liberty of the press, trial by jury, freedom of. 



6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

speech, popular government, self-respecting civic 
autonomy, these are solid goods. These we 
justly believe to be spiritual achievements, by 
which we would like history to know us. But 
these are collective achievements, founded in 
organization and secured by organization. We 
do not owe them to our laxity and incohesiveness, 
but to constitutions and to laws. They exist not 
by virtue of private self-assertion, but by virtue 
of a disciplined regard for the rights of others. 
We owe them to that tradition and experience 
which impels us with loyal accord to support a 
system that defines our mutual relations and 
estabhshes our collective life. 

If we cannot point to ourselves as bright ex- 
amples of the blessings of undiscipHned freedom, 
there remains, perhaps, the example of England, 
or the contrast of England and Germany. The 
war has already proved the necessity, for specif- 
ically military purposes, of national organiza- 
tion and universal service. If the Allies win the 
war it will be because having tardily acquired 
these virtues they enjoy certain residual advan- 
tages as well. But while this is granted, it will 
be said that England has owed her superior in- 
dividualism to her lack of just such military 
organization and discipline, and that Germany 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 7 

has sacrificed individualism in order to possess 
them. Now I am one of those who beheve that 
England does possess an individualism which 
Germany lacks, and that this individualism is a 
mark of superiority. Even this is not unqualifiedly 
true in view of the degree of snobbery and class 
antagonism which mars the democracy of Eng- 
land. But the fact remains that England is pre- 
eminently the home of men who know their rights 
and who sturdily insist upon them. Through 
combining independence with steadiness and 
practical sagacity, England has forged our con- 
stitutional liberties, has disseminated the spirit 
of tolerance and self-criticism, and has insisted 
upon owning and using her institutions instead 
of being enslaved or absorbed by them. In Ger- 
many, on the other hand, there is a certain political 
flabbiness, which tolerates authority too easily. 
Even art, science, and religion, which ought to 
emancipate the individual, have become a means 
of confirming and sanctifying his submission. 

If this be the case, it is nevertheless important 
to avoid confusing causes and effects, or assum- 
ing without reason that things which happen to- 
gether are therefore causally and inseparably re- 
lated. The Englishman's opposition to universal 
military service is undoubtedly associated in his 



8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

own mind with the individualism he admires 
and claims as his own. But the opposition is 
not, I think, so much a logical defense of his 
individuaUsm as a temperamental expression of 
it, a sort of psychological by-product. He would 
prefer to serve his country in war just as he 
would prefer to do anything else, as a matter of 
"sport," or from the motive of noblesse oblige, 
or out of fondness for tradition. He doesn't like 
anything that looks too orderly and prescribed, 
too freshly and deliberately made. He is fond 
of his crotchets, and regards reason as a sort of 
parvenu. TroUope wrote of one of his more 
doubtful characters: "He isn't of our sort. He's 
too clever, too cosmopolitan — a sort of man 
whitewashed of all prejudices, who wouldn't 
mind whether he ate horseflesh or beef if horse- 
flesh were as good as beef, and never had an as- 
sociation in his life." Universal military train- 
ing is too rational, too schematic, too exclusively 
mindful of the bare utilities and essentials. The 
Englishman shrinks from it as he shrinks from an 
adequate national system of education, or from 
the metric system, or from phonetic spelling. 
If it could only become a tradition like royalty 
and the top-hat, or an adventure like governing 
India and playing football, or a matter of instinct 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 9 

like the morning tub, he would cling to it until 
it had long since become obsolete. For the mili- 
tary virtues in themselves are unobjectionable. 
It is not the substance of the thing, but rather 
the deHberate act of adoption that is repugnant 
to English individualism. It is impossible to 
believe that once in vogue such a system would 
in the least abridge an Englishman's essential 
liberties or seriously alter the peculiar tone of 
his national life. 

That it is the methodical rather than the com^ 
pulsory element in a universal system of training 
and service which has stood in the way of its 
acceptance in England, appears in the readiness 
with which the pressure of pubhc opinion is used 
as a means of coercion. The voluntary theory 
impHes that men shall volunteer. It does not 
mean that men shall freely choose to serve or 
not to serve, according to taste or aptitude, but 
that they shall choose service according as na- 
tional exigencies shall dictate. In practise this 
leads inevitably to the ugliest sort of coercion. 
Many men who nominally volunteer are as a 
matter of fact shamed into it. They are shamed 
into it at first by example. If that does not suffice 
they are called hard names, such as "slackers.'' 
Unorganized pressure gives place in time to or- 



lo THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

ganized pressure. Among those who are thus 
systematically persecuted are many who not un- 
naturally resent an interference with what they 
have been taught to beHeve is their just liberty of 
action. The remnant thus harried and cornered 
is eventually coerced by conscription; which 
when thus arrived at, as a measure of last resort, 
is unblushing tyranny. The whole process, in 
short, is one of first conferring rights and then 
outraging them by sheer force. Where, on the 
other hand, the state is legally entitled to the 
military service of its citizens, as it is entitled to 
some fraction of their property, military service 
is taken for granted. It is acknowledged as an 
obligation, and is sustained by the law-abiding 
habits of the community. It is accepted in the 
spirit of fair play, r part of that general order 
of Hfe which a free i an accepts as a contracting 
beneficiary. 

Universal mJH service is otherwise opposed 
in England for eco ic reasons of a very different 
sort. The laborir^^ i not unjustly feels that he 
is a creditor ana noi debtor in his relations to 
the state. To him c ulsory service savors of 
tyranny because it is ^sed upon him by an 

authority that has neglec him. The tradition 
of laissez-faire, which has ught him that he 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER ii 

must look out for himself, has ^ot taught him to 
be grateful. In so far as the state absolves itself 
of responsibility it can impose no obligations. 
The moral of this difficulty is not that universal 
military service should therefore be rejected, but 
that the state should inspire and deserve the 
loyalty of its citizens through a just regard for 
their needs. Indeed, we are brought back to a 
much more fundamental and far-reaching ques- 
tion than any which concerns merely military 
exigencies alone. Laissez-faire fosters a com- 
placent selfishness among the successful, an ag- 
gressive selfishness among the hopeful, an envious 
selfishness among those who are unsuccessful, and 
a bitter selfishness among those who are hopeless. 
If this be individualism, the less of it the better. 
Neither its spirit nor its fruits are to be numbered 
among the blessings of English civilization. And 
in so far as it operates as a cause of opposition 
to universal military service, it argues for rather 
than against such a system. 

If England affords no evidence that the absence 
of universal military service is the cause of an 
individualism that is worthy and admirable, it 
will yet be argued that Germany illustrates the 
blighting effects of its adoption. That the mili- 
tary system of Germany forms part of a dynastic, 



12 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

bureaucratic and cultural system which as a whole 
is prejudicial to the best individualism does not, 
I think, require proof. One does not look to 
Germany for a tolerant cosmopolitanism, or for 
a jealous insistence upon the great civil liberties. 
But this is not a direct and necessary consequence 
of its mihtary mechanism. It is due to the pur- 
pose which directs that mechanism: to the spirit 
which dominates it, and the use which is made of 
it. The deeper causes are to be found in the 
Prussian traditions of conquest and dynastic 
right, in the Germanic philosophy of the state as 
absorbing and superseding its citizens, and per- 
haps in a racial propensity to domineer. These 
ideas find in the military system a harsh and ef- 
fective mode of expression. But the army is the 
instrument and not the cause. A fraternal and 
chivalrous people like the French have created 
a fraternal and chivalrous army. An unaggressive 
and home-loving people like the Swiss have 
created a defensive army. A democratic and 
radical people like the Australians have adapted 
a national military system to their ideals of pop- 
ular government and the dignity of labor. 

Military preparedness in itself means nothing 
more than foresight and organization applied to 
the contingency of war. The alternative is blind- 



THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 13 

ness and confusion. War is an actuality and a 
genuine peril. It is, furthermore, a peril which 
threatens the collective Hfe; there is no interest, 
however exalted, that is immune. Preparedness 
is therefore every man's concern. A national 
system of training and service is simply the re- 
sponsible, concerted, and effective way of meeting 
this peril. But the spirit which animates a mih- 
tary organization, on the other hand, will reflect 
the interests which men desire to safeguard. If 
we in America desire to be and remain free, if 
there is a peculiar tone of personal independence 
and equality that is the breath of Hfe to us, then 
that is the end to which our military organization 
will be consecrated, and that is the spirit which 
we shall carry with us into it. If we are to be 
free, we must be safely and effectively free. There 
must be a place secured for freedom, and to secure 
that freedom, free men may be soldiers. 

A deliberate and rational concert of action does 
not hamper individuahty. If there is any one in- 
controvertible principle that governs life, it is 
this: that freedom does not come of letting things 
take their course. Free individuals are not spon- 
taneously generated by the bare removal of re- 
strictions; they are the products of discipHne 
and order. A freedom that knows no bounds is 



14 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the conceit of impatient and careless minds. A 
military system that is imposed from without, or 
hastily improvised in a moment of panic, may in- 
deed be tyrannical. But a system freely adopted, 
in order to do loyally and skilfully that which 
must be done, is primarily a matter of morale and 
character. Over and above that it will vary with 
the genius and aims of the people who create it 
and enter into it. 

Since war is an actuality and a genuine peril, 
let us soberly undertake the burden it imposes. 
Let us cultivate the soldierly quahties, and let us 
equip ourselves with the tools which are effective 
in modem warfare. Let us acquire the capacity 
for organized action, and be ready for the occasion 
which a rational man will both fear and deprecate. 
But let us be such soldiers as we would be men. 
If we are lovers of liberty and devotees of peace, 
lot us inscribe these ideals on our banners. 



II 

THE VIGIL OF ARMS 

IT was thought appropriate that a man should 
pass the eve of his knighthood "bestowing 
himself in orisons and prayers." A knight should 
be a good knight, "a noble and gentle knight" — 
one dedicated to service and jealous of honor. 
Power is admirable only when restrained. Phys- 
ical strength in a man is justified only by the 
weakness which it succors, by the incorporeal 
things to which it gives a body. Unless their use 
is redeemed by necessity or by some humane 
cause, arms are merely cruel and mischievous. 
The sentiments and symbols associated with war 
are ways of recognizing its inherent hatefulness. 
They are the means of concealing the ugly truth 
that arms are devised to kill with. If the use of 
arms can be judged even tolerable it must be be- 
cause of the soldier's code and the soldier's cause. 
Hence a nation about to arm itself should 
confess its sins and renew allegiance to its ideals. 
The knight took vows to protect the holy sepul- 
chre, "to maintain and defend all ladies, gentle- 

15 



i6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

women, orphans, widows, women distressed and 
abandoned,*' or to perfect himself in purity, 
fidehty and honesty. It will not do to substitute 
for a code so exacting as that of chivalry, or a 
cause so clear as that of the crusades, a mere in- 
determinate vow of patriotism. Loyalty to one's 
country, unless one understands its policy and 
helps to mould it, is simply a shirking of the 
prior obligation to think for oneself. 

Mihtary service is at once a necessity, a good 
and a danger. But it is primarily a necessity. 
By this I mean that it is justified only as a means 
to an imperative end. It is not to be undertaken 
for itself, nor is it Hghtly to be adopted as a 
means. Nothing short of national safety or some 
higher design of international justice and order, 
can make it reasonable to cultivate the art of 
destruction. But since military service is so 
justified, as a painful necessity like surgery, cap- 
ital punishment or self-sacrifice, it is reasonable 
that it should be done well, and soberly under- 
taken as a function of the state. In a democracy 
this means that it should be acknowledged and 
assumed as an obligation by all citizens. For 
democracy implies that there shall be neither 
privilege nor immunity. "All the inhabitants of 
the state are its defenders by birth," said Scharn- 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 17 

horst. If this could be said of Prussia, it can be 
said with greater reason of a country Hke our 
own which proclaims the principle of civic equal- 
ity. 

The scale and the method of modern warfare 
make universal training not only an appropriate 
means, but an indispensable means. An untrained 
nation depending on a small professional army or 
on a horde of "embattled farmers" and other in- 
dignant citizens, presents the same pitiful spec- 
tacle as that afforded by the dervishes who fought 
Kitchener with spears at Omdurman. An armed 
man attacked with the naked fist, shot and shell 
opposed by bows and arrows, men trained to 
use the most improved implements of war re- 
sisted by equally brave men who have hith- 
erto handled nothing but a hammer, spade, 
trowel, tennis-racket, billiard-cue or umbrella — 
this is not magnificent, or even absurd; it is 
heart-breaking. Those who make it possible by 
their stubborn complacency or irrelevant idealism, 
are in effect as culpable as those who, because 
they preferred the individual to the group, and 
counted the souFs culture more important than 
mere bodily safety, might consent that undrilled 
children should crowd an inflammable school- 
house. 



i8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

The opposition to universal training, like the 
opposition to more limited forms of preparedness, 
is due more to ignorance than to principle. Thus 
our recently appointed Secretary of War confesses 
that he has changed his ideas as to the sufficiency 
of our military resources. He is reported to have 
said that "it is simply a matter of getting in- 
formation."^ He has discovered that a shght 
additional compHcation on the Mexican border 
would make it necessary to call upon 'Hhe entire 
standing army of the United States." "One 
cannot," he adds sagely, " consider such facts as 
that from an inside angle without reahzing that 
our army would be totally inadequate to handle 
a real war difficulty ! " The naivete of this con- 
fession is astounding. One would have supposed 
that by putting two and two together, and re- 
peating the operation a few times, Mr. Baker 
might have reached the same conclusion without 
being admitted to the "inside." What must be 
the feeling of those who have mastered the 
technic of military art, those army chiefs who, 
as Secretary Baker has also discovered, are not 
spoiling for war but are simply trained and 
thoughtful men who feel responsible for a cer- 

* From an interview by Fred C. Kelly, published in Harper's 
Weekly for April 22, 19 16. 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 19 

tain branch of the national service — ^what must 
be their feeling as this new scholar publicly re- 
cites his alphabet with all the airs of profound 
insight ! 

A policy of adequate military preparedness is 
not, except for those few persons who profess 
non-resistance, a question of principle, but of 
prudence and expediency. To be converted to it, 
it is only necessary to learn by experience, to 
observe facts and make inferences, and to govern 
one's present actions by a sane regard for future 
contingencies. In other words, it is merely a 
question of being normally intelligent about the 
hazard of war. Even universal military training 
is, I believe, dictated by mere prudence, quite 
apart from the wholesomeness and fairness of 
having the duty of defense undertaken jointly 
by all whose interest is at stake. 

There is gradually unfolding^ in England a 
most impressive, and, to all friends of England, a 
most distressing object-lesson in the failure of the 
voluntary system. This system creates the very 
resistance that it has to overcome. Events have 
proved, it seems to me quite unmistakably, that 
there is no real choice between compulsory service 
and voluntary service, but only between compul- 

* Written in March, 1916. 



20 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

sion in advance, as a part of the deliberate policy 
of the state, and compulsion in the midst of the 
national crisis. In the latter case it is too late 
to be fully effective, and is imposed unexpectedly 
upon those who are by elimination the most un- 
wiUing to serve, and who have been taught to 
believe that compulsory service is contrary to 
the political principles under which they live. 

Granting universal military duty to be the ef- 
fectual as well as the democratic way of doing 
what must be done, it follows that it is reason- 
able to make a virtue of necessity. And here it 
is proper to argue the educational benefits of 
miHtary training. That such benefits do accrue, 
no one who has had the least experience will 
deny. Prompt obedience, the economy of time, 
power to work effectively with all sorts of men, 
the ignoring of minor vexations and discomforts, 
self-sufficiency as regards the elementary things 
of Hfe, physical health and endurance, manual 
expertness — these are some of the lessons that 
are learned in the school of war. They are not 
carried away in note-books but under the skin 
in nerve and muscle. The greatest lesson of all 
is the habit of thinking nationally, the feeling 
that one has a country, and that one owes it 
something. A man then makes the acquaintance 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 21 

of his country as a whole, and for once, at least, 
looks it in the face. 

Now there are doubtless other ways in which 
this national-mindedness may be cultivated. Pro- 
fessor Dewey has proposed the centralization of 
the educational system, and Mr. Walter Lipp- 
mann has proposed the government ownership of 
railways.^ It can be urged against any of these 
proposals, including that of universal military 
training, that it implies the existence of that 
very national-mindedness which it is supposed 
to promote. There is evidently a circle that has 
got to be broken somewhere. A general national 
pohcy, foreign and domestic, for peace and for 
war, in education and in economic life, will de- 
velop rapidly when once the federal authority is 
an object of loyalty and confidence; and when 
on its part it serves the people with greater fore- 
sight, with a broader grasp of the total situation, 
and with a more serious sense of responsibility. 
But this new state of things cannot be certainly 
achieved by any single act or propaganda. No 
man can tell where the existing habits are weakest 
and may most easily be overthrown, or what 
may appeal most vividly to the imagination of 
the people. If educational and economic reform 

* The New Kepuhlic, for February 19 and April 15, 1916. 



22 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

can break the circle, by all means let them go 
forward. Meanwhile the spectacular tragedy of 
war, and the sudden necessity of thinking poHt- 
ically upon the larger international scale, have 
already done much to arouse us from our sepa- 
ratism and complacency. There is a spreading 
beHef that if we are to take part in the making 
of history we must acquire the strength to do it. 
MiHtary training, or some other exercise to make 
oneseK fit for national service, is a natural out- 
growth of the desire to act in this great crisis 
when every good thing is in jeopardy. It may 
well be that this emergency will enable us to 
find ourselves; and that from marching together, 
or working together to make the nation strong, 
we shall get a new sense of comradeship and of 
partnership that shall in the end revolutionize 
our culture and our social order. 

But it is neither the necessity of miHtary ser- 
vice, nor the virtue that may be made of this 
necessity, with which I want here more especially 
to deal. Military service has also its attendant 
dangers. I urge them not as arguments against 
it, but as abuses to be avoided. If there is any 
institution that is an unmixed blessing, I have 
never heard of it. It is not religion, for example, 
or conscience, or art, or government. Every 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 23 

political or social policy has its dangers; democ- 
racy itself has, perhaps, the most insidious dan- 
gers of all. But we do not abandon such policies 
when we have reason to believe that they are 
necessary, or are the most hopeful alternatives 
open to us. We adopt them, and then seek so 
far as possible to offset the attendant dangers. 
This we can do all the better for being put on 
our guard. 

So in the case of universal military service I 
shall summarize its dangers not in order to throw 
them in the balance against it, but in order to 
suggest positive measures by which these dangers 
can be avoided. If as a nation we are to take up 
arms, or even exercise ourselves in their use, it 
must be with a certain solemnity. Arms are 
edged tools; they are not playthings. If we are 
to acquire their use we must learn to use them 
safely, and only for a serious purpose. We must 
take measures to prevent their abuse, and to 
safeguard the superior interests which they might 
otherwise injure. Their use must be adjusted to 
those ends that justify our national existence. 
Military service should not only be dedicated to 
the highest end within the range of our present 
moral vision, but it should be informed with 
whatever human quality we think is finest, and 



24 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

corrected or offset by whatever measures may 
effectually protect our liberties and minimize the 
inevitable sacrifice. 

There never was a greater need than now of a 
comprehensive poHcy. The vivid fact of war and 
the new historical crisis have already upset our 
equilibrium — despite every attempt on our part 
to hold aloof. New national policies are inevit- 
able, and have, in fact, already been inaugurated. 
It is necessary, therefore, as though we were 
moving into a new house in a more thickly settled 
neighborhood, to see to it that there are rooms 
for all the family, places for our possessions, and 
shrines for our gods. In particular, how shall we 
be as strong as the hazard of war requires with 
the least prejudice to our peaceful pursuits and 
our constructive humane ends? It is the impor- 
tance, here and now, of such a stock-taking and 
reckoning of cost that will justify, I hope, the 
rehearsal of famiHar truisms. 

I. The American army should both be ded- 
icated to the service of democracy, and also be 
itself an example of democracy. Democracy is on 
trial, as it has been many times before. Usually 
the jury has disagreed. The charge has always 
been the same, namely, that democracy implies 
a lack of organization which breeds lawlessness, 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 25 

corruption and weakness. Just now it is a ques- 
tion whether a democracy can survive. Can it 
unite with liberty, equality and fraternity, enough 
strength to enable it to hold its own among gov- 
ernments which enjoy a greater concentration of 
power, and which can avail themselves of general 
habits of subordination and obedience? Can a 
house be governed by discussion without being 
divided against itself and suffering the proverbial 
penalty? The future alone holds the answer. 
But this much is evident — that unless a democ- 
racy can be strong it cannot be said to have suc- 
ceeded at all. Therefore, whoever devotes him- 
self to democracy must seek ways of making it 
strong. He who neglects the question of mih- 
tary preparedness fails not only to solve the 
problem of democracy but even to grasp it. A 
democratic government must be able to do what 
other governments do, namely, provide security 
against attack from abroad, and the necessary 
mechanism and organization by which the na- 
tion may exert its united strength when occasion 
requires. A democracy which relies for the 
execution of its policies on the indulgence or 
accidental interest of other nations, is a con- 
fessed failure. If, for example, we wish to de- 
fend Belgium against Germany but have to call 



26 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

Upon France to do it for us; if we avow the 
Monroe Doctrine but trust that if it comes to 
blows the Enghsh fleet will help us out; then our 
government has failed, whatever liberty of speech 
and thought we may enjoy in our domestic af- 
fairs. To prove that a democracy can maintain 
itself, protect the interests under its charge, and 
be as good as its word, is then the service which 
the armed force of a democracy owes to the 
cause of democracy. 

Like all of the agencies of the central govern- 
ment the military organization is in danger of 
spreading the error that the state is an end in 
itself. The symbols of war, the flag, martial 
music, the rhythm of parade, all of these tend 
to beget an idolatrous worship. Democracy is 
founded on the principle that the authority of 
government is justified only by the benefits which 
accrue to the governed. Democratic patriotism 
is not a blind and slavish loyalty, but is 
mixed with a strain of intelligent self-interest 
and providence. A democracy must not allow 
its head to be turned by drum-beats and gold 
braid. The real business of life is still to promote 
the happiness and well-being of individual men 
and women. The agencies of war as well as those 
of peace must be regulated and rigorously judged 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 27 

with reference to this end. The mere emotional 
effervescence of the war spirit must not be al- 
lowed to create "The Great Illusion," or any 
other illusion by which men are prevented from 
recognizing where their interest lies. Though 
the immediate object of military loyalty must 
be the state, that object must not in a democ- 
racy be worshipped by a devotee who asks 
nothing in return, but rather prized by one who 
well understands its beneficence. 

If the army and navy are not to subvert the 
democracy for which they act, they must be 
democratic in their own internal spirit and or- 
ganization, without loss of discipline.^ This is 
by no means impossible. It was achieved by 
the French armies of 1792; and, if we are to 
trust the reports, has been again achieved by 
the French armies of to-day. A football team is 
not less democratic for its team-work or for 
having a captain. Each individual member of 
the team feels that he depends on all the rest, 
and that it is necessary that there should be some 
one to lead and give commands. He who leads 

^The critics of universal service are as a rule silent regarding 
the objections that can so easily be urged against a professional 
army. A hired army is neither so representative, nor so responsible, 
nor so voluntary in its service as a citizen army. There is a very 
forcible discussion of the matter in F. S, Oliver's Ordeal by Battle, 
part IV, chap. VII. 



28 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

and he who is led both play indispensable parts 
and serve the same end. So in a democratic army 
the officer and the private are comrades because, 
each doing something needful, they acknowledge 
one another's support in the common cause. The 
officer is not a person who enjoys privileges so 
much as one whose duties are more exacting and 
more responsible. He is less distinguished by his 
trappings than by his long hours. He is more 
bound than the private, who looks to him rather 
with gratitude than with envy. 

Responsible leadership and prompt concerted 
obedience are not undemocratic where they are 
pervaded by an understanding of the game, and 
the will to play one's part in it. They become 
undemocratic only when the difference between 
officer and private coincides with more generally 
recognized social cleavages. To avoid this it 
is necessary that officers and men should be 
recruited from the same social classes, so that 
superiority of military rank should be identified 
only with superiority in military skill, or with 
that native quality of leadership which is inde- 
pendent of breeding or culture. It is important 
that men of wealth and position should serve in 
the ranks, and that men who are favored only 
by their military experience and native fitness 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 29 

should rise from the ranks to command them. 
To the same end it is important that humihating 
punishments should be avoided, and the author- 
ity of officers confined within clearly recognized 
bounds, so as to protect the self-respect of privates 
from the abuse or caprice of authority. In short, 
a democratic army must owe its discipline to 
morale and loyalty, rather than to harshness and 
to fear. It is self-evident that there is most hope 
of fostering this spirit in an army of citizens con- 
scious both of the equal dignity and of the com- 
mon service which that role implies. 

In his famous essay, "On Liberty," which is 
still the best specific for paternalism. Mill says 
that a free people must be "accustomed to trans- 
act their own business." He cites the resource- 
fulness of the French in times of revolution as 
being due to their military experience and the 
presence everywhere among the people of men 
who have been non-commissioned officers, and 
who have therefore a capacity to lead and to 
organize a plan of action. He attributes to 
Americans a like resourcefulness "in every kind 
of civil business," and contrasts France and 
America with the bureaucracy in which "all the 
experience and practical abihty of the nation" 
has been organized "into a disciplined body for 



30 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the purpose of governing the rest." A free people 
must be a people in which potential leadership 
is everywhere widely diffused; in which all have 
some aptitude both to command and to obey. 
The personnel of the military organization should 
therefore be in some degree interchangeable. 
There is an obvious mihtary advantage in this 
because it creates an inexhaustible reserve of 
officers. But the deeper reason for it lies in its 
divorcing the office from the man, and substi- 
tuting a subordination of position for personal ar- 
rogance and abasement. It should serve also to 
keep alive within the breast of one who has be- 
come for the time a colorless unit in the ranks 
the pecuHar temperament of an individual and 
the high pretensions of a man. In short, a democ- 
racy must avoid a mihtary caste, which it can 
best do by making the people its own army; and 
it must avoid an official caste, which it can best 
do by flexibility of organization, frequent pro- 
motion from the ranks, the interpenetration of 
all social classes in all grades of service and the 
promotion of a sense of partnership and personal 
equality between those who command and those 
who obey. 

2. Universal military service is consistent 
with democracy only in so far as it is popular. 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 31 

The principal objection to the so-called voluntary 
system is the fact that when compulsion is at 
last used, as it inevitably is, it is without the 
support either of the habits or the judgment of 
the people. The constitutionality of compulsion 
is not disputed. Every government must at least 
hold it in reserve as a course of last resort. In 
any war with a nation of equal or superior power, 
it will always be probable that the voluntary 
system will prove inadequate. The only way of 
avoiding the ugly method by which after the 
more willing have first been drained away the 
more unwilling residuum is then threatened and 
coerced, is to adopt the policy of universal ser- 
vice from the outset, with open eyes, because of 
its utiHty and its justice. It is then possible to 
create habits of mind and of body that are really 
consistent with national needs. 

The success of the poHcy in this country, as in 
England or any other democracy, must depend 
on the attitude of the working classes. There is 
reason to hope that organized labor may be con- 
verted to the principle of national service, not 
only from motives of patriotism, but for its 
educational and social advantages, and for its 
possible indirect bearing on economic difficulties 
through the creation of a better understanding 



32 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

between the working man and his employer. 
It is also probably inevitable that universal 
service should lead to the state's assuming on 
its side a greater responsibility for the welfare of 
the working classes. In short, a more provident 
and constructive economic poUcy might well 
grow out of the more vigorous nationality, and 
the more vivid sense of co-operation and mutual 
dependence, that universal miHtary service would 
stimulate. 

3. Whatever system of military service this 
country may adopt must be suited to our pecuhar 
institutions and to whatever we account indis- 
pensable to our national temperament. It has 
been argued that any military system is contrary 
to the genius of America. We are reminded of 
those who came here to escape military service, 
and to whom America would not be America 
were it not for that immunity. Now it is danger- 
ous to identify national life merely with immunity. 
Men will go anywhere to escape a disagreeable 
duty. That they should come to America from 
that motive argues no devotion to American in- 
stitutions and promises no willingness to assume 
the responsibilities of citizenship. It is a mis- 
fortune that America is reputed to be a land 
where you can make money easily and do as 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 33 

you please. Those whom this repute brings to 
us are Hkely to feel abused when they find that 
here as elsewhere success requires work, law and 
taxes. Compulsory military service is in princi- 
ple contrary to no ideal save that of reaping with- 
out toil and sacrifice; which is a delusion on 
which no national life can be founded. 

That which is most necessary in order to adapt 
mihtary training to American Hfe is that men 
should, as in the Swiss system, be withdrawn 
only for short periods from civil life. The func- 
tion of war must always be regarded as sub- 
ordinate to peaceful pursuits, in the life of the 
individual as well as in that of the nation. The 
citizen must be a non-combatant first and a 
soldier second. He must derive his tastes and 
standards from his family, economic, poHtical 
or recreative associations, so as to prevent the 
development or dominance of a distinct military 
type. Occasional military training, the attain- 
ment of skill in arms and manoeuvres, need no 
more suppress individuality than do athletic 
sports. The military uniform need no more efface 
personality than does the civilian uniform. As a 
matter of fact, uniformity in unessentials, such as 
clothes, step, carriage or manual dexterity, is a 
means by which one may escape attention and 



34 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

therefore be permitted to pursue one's own way in 
essentials, without scrutiny and censorship. Long 
hair and a flowing cravat bespeak not that 
independence which Americans respect, but that 
ostentation and tenderness to social regard which 
Americans are inclined to find ridiculous. If 
there be anything in mihtary form which is 
contrary to our spirit it is not that unobtrusive 
and workmanlike uniformity which is important, 
but those decorations and other concessions to 
personal vanity which can more easily be dis- 
pensed with. 

4. It is essential to democracy that the civil 
authority should be superior to the military 
authority, and that there should be one law and 
one moral code for soldiers and for shoemakers. 
What happened in Zabern in 1913 ought to be 
intolerable among Americans. The civilian con- 
trol of our mihtary forces is provided for in our 
constitutional forms and is heartily seconded by 
pubHc opinion. We must be content even with 
a loss of efficiency rather than run the risk of 
mihtary rule. Policy must at all times be governed 
by the electorate, and criticism of authority must 
always be tolerated so long as it is intended as 
an appeal to the arbitration of public opinion. 
Even in times of war it is essential to a democ- 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 35 

racy that the great body of citizens should exer- 
cise their political prerogatives. It is not incon- 
sistent with soldierly duty that one should fight 
so long as a state of war exists, and yet vote for 
a policy that would terminate the war. 

If there be any fear that an American army 
once organized on a formidable scale might be 
employed for aggressive purposes by an ambitious 
or unscrupulous administration, it is always pos- 
sible that compulsory enlistment should be con- 
fined to service at home, or on the borders. By 
such a provision a man would incur less risk of 
being ordered to do that which in principle he 
disapproves. He would not have given himself 
unconditionally into the keeping of another; but 
would have adopted the service freely from the 
imperative ground of national safety. It is im- 
possible to deny, however, that such conditional 
service might at times defeat the purpose of de- 
fense. "The only question of real importance," 
says Mr. F. S. OHver, "is this: At what place 
will the sacrifice of life be most effective for the 
defence of the country? If we can answer that 
we shall know also where it will be lightest." ^ 

It has been urged against compulsory service, 
by Mr. Norman Angell, for example, that it re- 

* Ordeal by Battle, p. 403. 



36 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

quires a man to fight in a war he deems un- 
righteous, and stops him from criticising it. 
That any given individual should be free at all 
times to do as his conscience dictates is some- 
what less possible in time of war than in time of 
peace. But the difference is only one of degree. 
Authority of any kind, civil or military, implies 
that individuals shall do under pressure what 
they would otherwise not do. If a man is un- 
fortunate enough to be a conscientious nihihst 
or a conscientious polygamist, he will find him- 
self constrained to act contrary to his own best 
judgment. He may have conscientious scruples 
against paying his taxes, or against educating 
his children, or against submitting to vaccination. 
But the state will penalize his action without 
respecting his conscience, and if he incites to riot 
on behalf of his own peculiar ideals he may have 
to submit to martyrdom. No way has been 
found nor ever will be found of avoiding this 
tragedy; it is simply the price which is paid 
for the benefits of social order. But this tragedy 
is minimized under Hberal political institutions 
by permitting individuals at stated times and in 
stated ways to share in the making of the laws 
under which they live. Under such institutions 
there are measures which a man may legally 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 37 

take toward making the law more to his own 
Hking. But meanwhile he must obey it as it 
is — ^under protest, if he wishes. 

In principle precisely the same situation exists 
in war-time. If the nation is in fact at war, then 
the executive and military authorities must prose- 
cute that war as effectively as they can under such 
laws or rules as may exist for their guidance. A 
citizen who does not approve of the war must 
bide his time. He has had his opportunity to 
influence national poHcy, and he will have it 
again. Meanwhile, he must bear his share of 
the burden which the national exigency imposes. 
Whether he be a volunteer or a conscript will not 
much matter. He cannot expect to reserve 
liberty of action in the presence of the enemy. 
If his conscience is offended, so much the worse 
for his conscience. What he needs is a new con- 
science which will teach him to keep the faith 
with his fellows until such time as their common 
understanding and their controlling policy shall 
have been modified. The man who refuses to 
obey the law or play the game because he has 
been outvoted is more likely to be afflicted with 
peevishness or egotism than exalted by heroism. 

Under a system of national service, further- 
more, the army and the electorate are one and 



38 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the same. In proportion as the government is 
popular, the army will itself have authorized the 
pohcy under which it acts. Unpopular wars are 
much less possible imder such a system than 
under that system in which war is voted by one 
man and fought by another. When war means 
to each voter his own personal obKgation to 
abandon peaceful pursuits, submit to hardship 
and risk his life, he will interest himself in for- 
eign poUcy, and will not lightly lend his support 
to an aggressive or to a quixotic enterprise. 

5. Since miHtary service itself emphasizes the 
central authority, increases soHdarity and pro- 
motes loyalty to whatever is traditional or es- 
tabhshed, it is important that it should be offset 
by agencies tending to independence, individuality 
and criticism. The greatest of these agencies is 
education. Over and above the education for 
HveKhood and the education for service, it is 
indispensable that there should be the education 
that emancipates. There could be no greater 
disaster in a free country than that a national 
educational system should be contrived merely 
to mobiHze the intellectual and moral resources 
of the community for the purposes of the state. 
Co-operation, patriotism and all the civic virtues 
must indeed be imparted, but without killing 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 39 

that revolutionist and non-conformist that lives 
within every free man's breast. Nationalistic 
education must never displace that "universal" 
or "personal" education which Goethe said only 
noblemen enjoyed in his day, but which in a 
democracy must be open to all eager minds. 

6. If war is not to be the result of caprice or 
accident, if it is not to be forced upon one un- 
expectedly by the aggression of another nation, 
it must be subordinated to some general inter- 
national policy. As has been rightly insisted, 
military preparations can be rational only when 
they are supplemented by some statesmanlike 
and far-reaching plan of action. The present war 
is rapidly destroying our traditional domestic- 
ity. The American poHcy has in the past been 
a home policy, such as the securing of indepen- 
dence, the winning of the West and the preserva- 
tion of the Union. The Monroe Doctrine, if it 
is to survive, must be put upon a new interna- 
tional basis. That we must henceforth live among 
nations was a heresy yesterday, but to-day it is 
only a truism. It is as true of a nation desiring 
to be let alone, as of one cherishing dreams of con- 
quest. For the future a nation can as little af- 
ford to be without an alliance as a man can 
afford to be without a country. That isolation 



40 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

which was once our strength is now our weak- 
ness. 

7. A liberty-loving country like our own should 
bring its rustic virtues into the international 
society. It is possible to be cosmopolitan with- 
out being cynical. There is no reason why we 
should not be diplomatic without being arrogant. 
There is a courtesy which reconciles pride with 
generosity, and enables self-respecting individuals 
to pay honor without inquiring too particularly 
whether it is due. Similarly there is a mode of 
national conduct which permits of national con- 
victions and national purpose without loss of 
humor and tolerance. Let us, therefore, cultivate 
this spirit of reciprocating and chivalrous na- 
tionality. 

8. The political principle by which inter- 
national relations may be rescued from lawless- 
ness, but without offending against the just pride 
of individual nations, is federalism. Fortunately 
it is more than a principle; it is already an achieve- 
ment. The integrity of the British Empire under 
the strain of war is the most hopeful pohtical sign 
of the time. It is the most triumphant realization 
which history affords of that "co-existence of sev- 
eral nations under the same State" which Lord 
Acton a half-century ago said was "one of the 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 41 

chief instruments of civilization/' ^ and indicative 
of greater advancement than the mere unity of 
a single state. The loyalty of the self-governing 
British dependencies, each with its strong local 
pride and ambition, with its individual differences 
of social organization, temperament, language 
and race — their instant recognition of a common 
crisis and a common cause, affords better ground 
than any event of history for the hope that all 
nations may some day be federated. World- 
wide federation means one state for international 
purposes, together with autonomy for national 
purposes. It means the rallying of all nations 
to the defense of the international authority and 
policy, while that poHcy, in turn, promotes 
the diversity of national cultures, and enables 
each nation to prosper in its own way. As Mr. 
H. N. Brailsford has well insisted, no international 
league can flourish simply "by force and threats.''^ 
It must promise advantages. Nations must be 
persuaded that they can gain their own ends best 
in the settled neighborhood of nations, rather 
than on its lawless outskirts. 

The problem that arises from the contrast be- 
tween more advanced and more backward peoples 

* History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 290. 
2 The War of Steel and Gold, p. 330. 



42 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

has its only chance of solution through the same 
principle. Somewhere there must be a frontier 
where strangers meet; where they must learn to 
be friends if not enemies, and to trade if not to 
plunder. The world cannot exist half savage and 
half civilized. There is a genuine difference be- 
tween a savage and a foreigner, between a Hotten- 
tot and a Chinaman. The one is to be educated 
or protected as a child; the other to be regarded, 
if not with understanding, then at least with re- 
spect, as another way of being a man. The 
obligation of civilization to savagery is that of 
helping it to its feet, without directing where it 
shall walk. We shall have done our work well 
in the Philippines if we have taught those who 
live there how to be different from ourselves, 
and how to do it well. If we were to force our 
culture upon them, and convert them, for ex- 
ample, to the literary school of Bret Harte, Mary 
E. Wilkins and James Whitcomb Riley, we should 
commit an impertinence, and impoverish the 
world. But if we can show them how to keep the 
peace among themselves and with others, how 
to find their own resources and develop their 
own capacities, and then leave them to perfect 
themselves in their own way, we shall have 
helped a brother and created a new nation. 



THE VIGIL OF ARMS 43 

9. He who takes up arms must enter the 
service of peace. This is not a mere paradox, or 
the echo of a prevailing sentiment, but honest 
downright morals. Universalism must take pre- 
cedence of nationahsm on the same ground that 
entitles nationahsm to take precedence of individu- 
alism. Nationalism is a higher principle of action 
than individuahsm, by all the other individuals of 
whom it takes account. A nation is not a mystical 
entity, other than you and me, but it is more 
than you or me inasmuch as it is both of us and 
still more besides. Similarly, humanity is more 
than nationahty, not because it is different, but be- 
cause it is bigger and more permanent. No man, 
least of all a soldier, can ignore any of the effects 
of his conduct. He must promise himself that his 
conduct shall in the final reckoning be helpful 
rather than hurtful. He must have imagination 
and intelligence enough to judge his action by 
its effects across the boundaries of his nation 
and of his time. If he be thus enlightened he 
will then justify himself only when his action, 
though in its first incidence it be destructive, is 
in its full effect a saving and multiplication of 
life. 



Ill 

THE TOLERANT NATION 

WORDS sometimes owe their usefulness to 
their ambiguity. Thus, one's doubt or 
utter blankness of mind when compelled to pass 
judgment on a work of art is decently concealed 
by such words as ^^interesting" or "suggestive." 
The commonest word in the technical philosoph- 
ical vocabulary of any age is usually a label by 
which some part of the primeval chaos is neatly 
covered so that attention may be concentrated 
on the rest. Just now it is the word "experience." 
In contemporary poHtical thought a similar 
service is rendered by the term "nationality." 
It is a commonplace of recent history that the 
nineteenth century was pecuKarly a century in 
which men fought and argued in terms of the 
principle of nationahty. The present war is 
supposed to be due to the assertion of national- 
ity, and justified by the defense of it. But just 
what nationality is, is far from clear. Indeed, 
most discussions of the matter are chiefly con- 
cerned to show that it is not any of those things 
which it is usually supposed to be. 

44 



THE TOLERANT NATION 45 

Thus, a nationality is not the same thing as a 
state. This is clear, whatever one's view as to 
their relative priority. If we are to believe Lord 
Acton, "a state may in course of time produce 
a nationality; but that a nationality should 
constitute a state is contrary to the nature of 
modern civihzation." ^ According to this view 
nationality may arise from "the memory of a 
former independence,'' and its principal cause be 
tyranny and oppression from abroad. But even 
so, the nationahty once acquired is a different 
thing from mere political independence. It is a 
new fellow-feeling begotten by political adversity. 
It does not consist in the mere fact of a common 
government but in the new sense of common 
loyalty and common proprietorship. Similarly, 
when it is argued that nationaHties should be 
granted political autonomy, it is assumed that 
they may exist in its absence. Thus the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire is commonly described as a 
single state composed of many nationalities. Or 
when it is proposed that a world-state should be 
formed out of existing nationalities, it is taken 
for granted that these nationaKties as such would 
in some sense maintain their identity. 

The fact is that with the growth of liberal polit- 

* History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 292. 



46 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

ical thought it has become less and less possible to 
regard the state as an ultimate by which nation- 
ahty or anything else can in the last analysis be 
explained. Once the state is divorced in principle 
from the de facto government, or from hereditary 
legitimacy, or from the sanction of the church, it 
must be supposed in some sense to express the 
collective needs and aspirations of a social group. 
And in so far as the citizens of any state so 
regard their government, as theirs to adopt, or 
to make and mould, it is evident that the state 
becomes, if it was not originally, an instrument 
and visible sign of something like nationality. 
This, of course, does not explain what national- 
ity is; but only discourages the hope of identify- 
ing it simply with the state, and points to the 
necessity of looking to the deeper facts of social 
solidarity. 

There are certain solidifying agencies that are 
evidently not so much criteria of nationahty as 
conditions necessary or favorable to its existence. 
Thus it is evident that a nationahty is not an eth- 
nological unit. Neither purity of race nor even a 
common racial blend defines such a nationality 
as our own; although it is evident that racial 
homogeneity conduces to national life and is in 
some measure invariably present. It is doubtless 



THE TOLERANT NATION 47 

the most powerful single cause of group unity. 
Similarly, men who, as Nietzsche says, "speak one 
language and read the same newspapers" are in 
so far quahfied for common nationahty, since 
they are capable of intercourse and share a com- 
mon literature. But since languages are so easily 
learned and so easily forgotten, and since the same 
language can be spoken by peoples otherwise remote 
and diverse, this evidently affords neither a funda- 
mental nor a sufficient principle of nationality. 

Propinquity is evidently a necessary condition 
of the neighborly relations and co-operative ac- 
tion implied by nationahty; but the boundaries 
of nationaHties only occasionally follow physio- 
graphic frontiers. A common cHmate or other 
aspect of nature will give to a local group a 
sense of identity not unHke that which the in- 
dividual derives from the "feeP' of his own 
body; but most national territories embrace too 
much variety to find in this a general bond. A 
common past and common traditions evidently 
solidify a group just as his peculiar memories 
give to each individual a sense of his personal 
uniqueness. But there are new nations as well 
as old; and in any case it is not the mere fact of 
historical continuity but its cultural effect which • 
is significant for nationality. 



48 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

In short, race, language, physiography and 
history do not constitute nationahty, but con- 
duce to it in so far as they give rise to the sense 
of a common Hfe. It is evident, then, that na- 
tional individuality like personal individuality is 
a psychological fact which has many varying and 
supplementary causes. A man will possess na- 
tionahty in so far as he identifies himself with 
a group by act of will and a less conscious but not 
less significant community of sentiment or idea. 
Although the difference is not a sharp one, and 
although the two factors act and react upon one 
another, it will be useful to distinguish between 
the bond of utility and the bond of culture. I 
shall therefore consider nationality under each 
of these aspects and endeavor to bring to light 
in each case the causes by which nationahty 
tends to tyranny and intolerance, or the means 
by which this evil consequence may be prevented. 

The bond of utihty means simply that every 
individual finds it expedient to go into partner- 
ship with his fellows. He must attach himself 
to some organized society in which his interests 
are adjusted to those of other men according to 
certain rules which are defined and enforced by 
a common authority. Nationahty in this sense 
is the same as pohty, but only provided polity 



THE TOLERANT NATION 49 

is regarded as a voluntary association for mutual 
benefit, and not as an alien coercive force. The 
state is an expression of nationality only in so 
far as it is adopted and acknowledged as their 
own by a group of participating beneficiaries. 
There is, of course, a wide difference of opinion 
as to the scope of this pohtical partnership, rang- 
ing from laissez-faire to state socialism. But 
there are two benefits which are the least that is 
expected of the state: the benefit of internal 
peace, and the benefit of security against external 
aggression. A state is a social group living under 
one system of law, and making common cause 
together against dangers from abroad. A state 
has one police, and one military force, ruled by 
one ultimate authority. This account of the 
state ignores such ambiguous situations as have 
been created in the past by the temporal claims 
of the church, and such as are created now by 
federal systems and by alliances. These doubtful 
cases prove that it is impossible to distinguish 
the identity of the state in any absolute and un- 
qualified manner; but they do not affect the 
particular considerations to which I wish now to 
turn. 

The internal or domestic policy of a state de- 
fines the limits within which individuals may do 



so THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

as they please without getting in one another's 
way. Its object is to secure to each individual 
as large a sphere of liberty as possible; in short, 
to guarantee private privilege. Variety, original- 
ity, happiness and growth are the signs of its 
success. These things must, however, be at- 
tained by organization and discipline. And 
therein lies the difficulty and paradox of domestic 
poHcy. Repression and orderly routine are in- 
dispensable; but if carried too far they defeat 
their purpose. There is such a thing as a sort 
of national asceticism in which repression is 
deemed an end in itself, instead of an instrument 
of hberty. Organization is an art and requires 
experts; but these readily become a bureaucracy 
and eventually a ruling class which asserts its 
own interests in place of those it was designed 
to serve. "Whenever a single definite object is 
made the supreme end of the state," to quote 
Lord Acton once more, "be it the advantage of 
a class, the safety or the power of the coimtry, 
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or 
the support of any speculative idea, the state 
becomes for the time inevitably absolute." ^ In 
other words, whatever the function which the 
state exercises, it requires submission. But this 

1 op. ciL, p. 288. 



THE TOLERANT NATION 51 

submission may become a habit through con- 
fusion of mind or through helplessness, so that 
the instrument becomes a burden and a tyranny. 
Hence the just suspicion of authority which is 
characteristic of the peoples of western Europe 
and America. Hence "eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty." Here is the danger which 
justifies the distrust of representatives and ex- 
perts among the more advanced democracies — 
the rude insistence that public officials shall be 
servants, and that if experts be necessary, then 
all must be educated to some competence in 
public affairs. 

But this same characteristic difficulty is ag- 
gravated by the interplay of domestic and for- 
eign policy. A common danger from abroad out- 
ranks in urgency any question of domestic rights, 
as in the case of the individual the question of 
life or death instantly eclipses questions of com- 
parative happiness. Thus the threat of war 
invariably leads to a conservative reaction. It 
has led, in France before the war, and in all coun- 
tries since its outbreak, to the postponement or 
slighting of such questions as the relations of 
church and state, or the extension of the suffrage, 
or the improvement of the conditions of labor. 

It is, moreover, unhappily the fact that the pol- 



52 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

icy which best serves individual interests at home, 
and the policy which makes a nation most power- 
ful abroad, do not coincide. A Hberal domestic 
policy impKes protest and insubordination; it en- 
courages claims and counter-claims in behalf of 
private interests, and leads to changes of the ex- 
isting equilibrium. Power abroad, "on the other 
hand, impHes concentration of purpose, a forget- 
fulness of grievances, and a willingness to bear in- 
justice in the presence of the great emergency. 
Thus the solution of the great problem of personal 
happiness and development is retarded or put 
aside, and society returns for a time to the rudi- 
mentary question of bare preservation. 

I do not for a moment mean to belittle this 
question of preservation. It does and must 
take precedence of other questions. Aggression 
from abroad creates a genuine emergency. In 
order that nations shall be anything at all, they 
must first exist. Even such apprehension as 
has led Enghshmen of to-day seriously to ad- 
vocate a dictatorship is not wholly groundless. 
The tragic fact is that no people can give itself 
up whole-heartedly to the improvement of the 
lot of individuals, or to any of the higher spiritual 
purposes of civihzation, until all peoples are en- 
gaged in the same task. A single aggressive 



THE TOLERANT NATION 53 

power let loose in the world can compel all na- 
tions to be on their guard, and so to devote to 
the end of barely living, energies that would 
otherwise be devoted to the task of living better. 
Nations like individuals require a guarantee of 
security before they can afford to be happy. The 
problem of civilization is therefore a common 
and a mutual task in which all nations must 
move abreast. The national virtues that are 
required in an age of international lawlessness 
contradict those more hberal virtues to which 
civilization aspires. But the latter imply the 
advent of a new era in which international author- 
ity shall have delimited a sphere within which 
each nation may live out its life in safety and 
freedom. 

So much, then, for that ilHberality in national 
life which is due to fear, that invoking of the 
principle of force which is necessary in order to 
meet force on equal terms. But this necessity 
is due to aggression which must somewhere arise 
from within. Such aggression may be and com- 
monly has been due to motives of utiHty — to the 
desire for land, natural resources, or other eco- 
nomic advantages. Without belitthng the ac- 
tual effect of these motives, I wish, nevertheless, 
to ignore them in the present discussion in order 



54 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

to emphasize another motive which is more novel 
and more distinctive of the present crisis. I re- 
fer to the motive of national culture. This is the 
present warrant of aggression when aggression 
takes high ground. Its danger lies in its self- 
righteousness. We know what to make of honest, 
straightforward aggrandizement, and we know 
what to call it. But the nation which goes forth 
to conquer not only in shining armor, but with 
shining faces all aglow with the sense of a holy 
mission, is not only a menace to life and prop- 
erty, but to reason and conscience as well. One 
stands aghast with one hand on one's pocket and 
the other on one's troubled brow. 

Culture as a bond of nationality, is a very 
different matter from the culture that liberalizes 
and emancipates. It is a culture, a peculiar 
system or code of beliefs, sentiments and cus- 
toms, by which a people feel themselves to be in 
some measure distinguished and set apart. Maz- 
zini said that those who aspire to nationality 
"demand to associate freely, without obstacles, 
without foreign domination, in order to elaborate 
and express their idea.^' ^ A national culture is 
an idea or system of ideas, as to how to live and 
as to what is worth living for, common to the 

1 Quoted by J. Dover Wilson, in The War and Democracy, p. i6. 



THE TOLERANT NATION 55 

members of a group and peculiar to the group 
as a whole. Such a special culture arises from a 
thousand causes, many of them obscure, but it 
does arise and get itself recognized. 

This is not that quaint affair of "sweetness 
and light," or knowledge of "the best that has 
been thought and said in the world,'' of which 
we have more often heard. It is not that cos- 
mopolitan value which is associated with art, 
science, philosophy and history. National cul- 
ture is in a certain respect the precise opposite of 
liberal culture. Thus science is a part of Hberal 
culture in so far as it deals with nature, employs 
a dispassionate method and arrives at generally 
vaHd laws; but science is a part of German cul- 
ture in so far as it is performed by German 
scientists and applied to German economic life. 
Art is a part of liberal culture in so far as it 
implies generally valid standards of taste and 
makes one family of Phidias, Dante, Shakespeare 
and Goethe; but it is a part of German culture 
only in so far as it creates a Denkmal of Bis- 
marck, or in that Goethe happened to be born in 
Frankfort-on-the-Main, or in that Shakespeare's 
dramas are appreciated in BerHn. In liberal cul- 
ture philosophy began with Plato because he was 
"the spectator of all time and eternity," in na- 



56 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

tional culture it began with Kant because he lived 
in East Prussia. History in so far as it is an 
affair of culture, enables one to inherit the whole 
empire of the past. As a part of German cul- 
ture it enables one to trace one^s descent from 
a select family of barbarians who dwelt in the 
Pomeranian bog. 

It is evident that the culture-motive in national- 
ity may readily become a source of iUiberality. 
But since some measure of common sentiment and 
opinion is both inevitable and desirable, it is im- 
portant to discover precisely wherein this danger 
Hes. Its source will be not in the fact of national 
culture, but in the attitude which accompanies it. 
It is not in being German, for example, that the 
danger Hes, but in being too self-conscious about 
it, or in taking it too seriously. 

There is a good deal of nonsense abroad in the 
world, aided and abetted by a certain type of 
philosophy, as to the value of self-consciousness. 
It is very easy to confuse originaHty and dis- 
tinction with the use of the looking-glass or the 
first personal pronoun. As a matter of fact the 
man who possesses individual distinction is far 
more likely to be absorbed in an object or cause 
than in himself. If he departs from usage it is 
because he is really careless of appearances, not 



THE TOLERANT NATION 57 

because he is studiously careless. In the latter 
case one is aping the appearance of carelessness* 
and so conforming to a type. He is endeavoring 
to be what is expected of him, not what he is 
prompted to be by his own peculiar genius. 

The same thing is true of national distinction. 
In so far as it is indigenous and original, it is 
unconscious and not self-conscious. It comes of 
exercising one's judgment honestly and indepen- 
dently. The way to be American, for example, is 
not to play a character-part representing the con- 
ventional "American traits," but to seek the best, 
or do one's duty as one sees it, leaving the Amer- 
icanism to take care of itself. If one is born in 
America, if one lives in the American milieu, sub- 
ject to the characteristic influences of that en- 
vironment and tradition, the Americanism will 
take care of itself. National movements in art, 
science or philosophy are not the result of men's 
trying to be French or English; but they result 
when Frenchmen or Englishmen try to make 
something that is beautiful or say something 
that is true. No important cultural movement 
in the world's history has resulted from the de- 
liberate cultivation of one's own peculiarities. 
On the contrary they have usually been inspired, 
as in the case of the ItaHan Renaissance, by a 



58 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

somewhat extravagant regard for the peculiari- 
ties of others. That which distinguishes the mo- 
tive of great art and science is its universaHty, 
its objectivity, its preference of standards to 
personaHties or local pride. The personal or 
national quahty, like the quahty which dis- 
tinguishes an epoch or a race, is determined by 
the angle and point of origin from which the 
universal is approached, and it depends for its 
fullest expression, not on self-consciousness, but 
on absorption and sincerity. 

But self-consciousness is worse than a weak- 
ness by which the purpose of national culture 
defeats itself. Not only does it divert the at- 
tention from the greatest and best things, and 
check their Hberalizing and quickening power, 
but it begets a state of self-righteous irrespon- 
sibility that is a positive danger to the rest 
of mankind. National self-consciousness, like in- 
dividual self-consciousness, emphasizes the form 
rather than the substance of Hfe. It breeds 
irresponsibihty because it encourages men to 
believe that the agent's end of the act is more 
important than the patient's. If the agent feels 
or conducts himself in a certain prescribed manner, 
then it matters Httle what the consequences of 
the act may happen to be. The good marksman 



THE TOLERANT NATION 59 

is the one whose form is good, not the one 
who hits the target. Morahties of this sort are 
common enough. There is the conscience school 
which teaches that the criterion of right action 
is the inward oracle rather than the outward 
effect. This school has been too conventional, 
too wedded to the conservative moral tradition 
to be as dangerous as some others. Even so, 
its bhnd conservatism and its bigotry are well- 
known. The full danger of this way of thinking 
is realized when it is united with the radical 
temper. Any act has virtue, says Nietzsche, 
which issues from the sense of power. If you can 
feel masterful while you do it, it doesn't so much 
matter what you do; you may even perform 
deeds of benevolence. 

But the great morality which has emanated 
from Germany is that of "self-realization." The 
important thing according to this view is that 
your deeper self should act, and not some mo- 
mentary impulse. When you deliberately choose 
an act, or put your whole self into it — ^when it is 
really you that do it, with a full sense of the 
gravity of this self-committal, then the act is a 
right act, whatever comes of it. Of course, it will 
be a part of your deliberation to take the conse- 
quences into account. But that will be inciden- 



6o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

tal to the coaxing out of the deeper self, and will 
never prove the act right or wrong. Now, it is 
clear that this doctrine is readily applied to the 
case of nationality. The precept, "Be yourself,'' 
may, when one identifies oneself with the nation, 
be amended to read "Be German," or "act so as 
to feel German when you do it." The act will 
then be right, because it was rightly conceived at 
the source. 

There is a danger for the agent himself in such a 
sanction of conduct. It gives rise to the mistaken 
behef that one can sow without reaping, and so 
encourages a fatuous disregard of the laws of life. 
It is like the medicine by which some persons 
hope to offset the effects of gluttony, or the piety 
which is warranted to save one's soul without 
requiring that one shall mend one's ways. But 
the greatest danger of formalism is that which 
threatens not the agent but the unhappy mortal 
on whom he chooses to realize himself. A man 
with a conscience, or a sense of mastery, or a 
self, or some other inner authority by which he 
justifies himself, is a menace to any neighborhood. 
He is like a man playing with dangerous weapons, 
who doesn't look where he is shooting. For 
every act is a dangerous weapon. Discharged in 
the midst of a thickly settled community it is 



THE TOLERANT NATION 6i 

sure to hit and injure somebody, unless its direc- 
tion and effects are carefully regulated. It 
wouldn't do in any community to allow men to 
discharge loaded firearms simply in order to 
express themselves. Or if it were permitted, the 
most dangerous man would be he who felt he 
had the most to express. 

So society finds it necessary to suppress any 
man who is too exclusively concerned with being 
himself, and has to be especially firm with those 
who take themselves seriously. When spiritual 
exaltation reaches a certain height it becomes 
necessary to use handcuffs and a strait-jacket. 
If a Nietzschean superman should break into any 
settled community he would of course have to 
be jailed at once. National self-consciousness 
has to be met in the same way by the neigh- 
borhood of nations. The justification of action 
by its expressiveness of national peculiarities, a 
policy dictated simply by the principle of being 
one's national self, whether German or anything 
else, is socially intolerable. It has to be reg- 
ulated, or even suppressed, in the interest of 
public safety. 

A national culture may, then, be intolerant by 
virtue simply of a heightened self-consciousness — 
an excessive self-preoccupation. This motive is 



62 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

not primarily aggressive. The effect upon others 
is not so much calculated as disregarded. But it 
is easy to pass over into a sense of self-importance 
or into the conviction of a holy mission. Self- 
importance may simply argue youth. There is 
something of this doubtless in present German 
nationalism. It is a new nationaHsm, and is so 
important to those who have recently achieved 
it after a long struggle, that it is easily assumed 
to have cosmic importance. Such youthful seK- 
importance is naturally associated with self- 
consciousness; as in the case of the young man 
with his first pair of long trousers, for whom all 
windows are mirrors. But this German self- 
importance is a deeper and more formidable 
thing, which can be traced back even to the age 
before the Napoleonic wars. From Kant's day 
to the present, Germans have been exhorted to 
believe themselves pecuHarly indispensable to 
civiHzation. This was at first doubtless a counsel 
of despair. When Fichte said to the German 
nation, "If you sink, humanity sinks with you," 
he sought to restore the self-respect and determina- 
tion of a people prostrate before the conqueror. 
But in the long run the German nation has be- 
lieved what it was told, and has no intention of 
allowing humanity to sink. On the contrary. 



THE TOLERANT NATION 63 

Germany proposes to make the elevating of 
humanity its particular business and whether 
humanity Hkes it or not. There is a dreadful 
seriousness about it, a resoluteness of purpose 
which may well cause the unregenerate to tremble. 
To understand the precise nature of this cul- 
tural mission it is helpful to consult the familiar 
analogy of religion. It was only after painful 
struggles that the mind of western Europe was 
emancipated from the conviction that it is of 
the essence of religion to be intolerant. This was 
because the mind of western Europe had become 
thoroughly habituated to the Jewish and Chris- 
tian idea that the God of a particular historical 
tradition was Almighty God. According to the 
pagan idea the god of any special cult must 
necessarily be a particular god — that is, only one 
of many gods. The only common God is the 
divine principle at large, which cannot be monopo- 
lized, but only worshipped by each people accord- 
ing to their lights and under such forms and mani- 
festations as their special interests and locality 
shall dictate. A reHgious cult of this sort protects 
its own gods from sacrilege, while also admitting 
the sacredness of other gods. But Judaism and 
Christianity have said: ^^Our God, the God of our 
fathers, the God we worship and proclaim, is 



64 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the God." It is sacrilege to the Christian God to 
admit the sacredness of any other god, and the 
benefits of rehgion are in this view denied to all 
save those who associate themselves with the 
chosen cult. It therefore becomes the mission 
of this cult to save men in the name of "true 
religion" from the religions they freely choose. 
Hence the long tragedy of intolerance and persecu- 
tion, with its diabolical paradoxes — the use of 
force to impose belief, the violent assault upon 
piety from the motive of piety, the grim resolve 
of one man to do good to his neighbor even though 
his neighbor should die of it, and die cursing his 
self-appointed benefactor. 

Now if for religion we substitute civilization, 
and if for a special cult like Christianity we sub- 
stitute a national culture, we discover the parallel 
which I wish to emphasize. CiviKzation like re- 
ligion has its special dispensations, and there are 
two views that one may take of that dispensa- 
tion imder which one Hves. One may do homage 
to it, and at the same time respect the diverse 
prejudices of others; or one may beUeve that 
one's own dispensation is the exclusive channel 
through which the blessings of civilization are to 
be distributed to all mankind. In this case alien 
prejudices become a sin by which men destroy 



THE TOLERANT NATION 65 

their chance of progress, and from which they 
must be saved for their own good. Thus Ger- 
many presents the remarkable spectacle of a 
modern nation which regards itself as the chosen 
people of civilization; chosen to save the world, 
not in the world^s way, but in its own, the Ger- 
man way. This is neither localism nor univer- 
sahsm, but both; the clothing of this particular 
thing that flourishes here and now, with the awful 
authority and majesty of the absolute. It has 
precisely the same effect upon the uninitiated as 
though a familiar companion were suddenly to 
say: "Oh, by the way, you know / am GodJ'^ 
Such a remark at once renders social relations im- 
possible. If one believes, then one may bow down 
and worship. Otherwise, one must either fly for 
one's life or employ forcible restraint. 

A cultural mission, like an intolerant religion, 
justifies itself by a philosophy of history. In- 
deed, most philosophies of history consist in 
giving absolute metaphysical significance to the 
historical moment of the author, or in picturing 
history so that it converges upon the author. 
In this the German philosophies of history have 
imitated the Christian models of Saint Augustine 
and Saint Thomas. Thus for Hegel art culminates 
in Romanticism, religion in Lutheranism, and 



66 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

politics in the Prussian monarchy. The modern 
world is "the German world," simply. But this 
is only a retrospective view of the matter, and is 
comparatively harmless. The more sinister mo- 
tive finds expression in Kant's view of patriotism 
as the will that the end of humanity "shall be 
first realized in the particular nation to which 
we ourselves belong, and that this achievement 
thence spread over the entire race." ^ The ex- 
traordinary thing is this proprietary interest in 
civilization. It is as though one claimed a sort 
of concession in perpetuity to bottle the essence 
of civilization and sell it imder a trade name. 

Bernhardi would not be significant if he were 
original. In claiming "all the intellectual and 
moral progress of mankind" to rest on the achieve- 
ments of Luther and Kant, he is simply quoting 
tradition. The same is true of the striking pas- 
sage that follows, and which Professor Dewey 
cites with effect in his admirable book, Ger- 
man Philosophy and Politics,'^ The tone of this 
passage is in harmony with that of the founders 
of spiritual Germany. "To no nation except the 
German," says Bernhardi, "has it been given to 



* Quoted by J. Dewey, in his German Philosophy and Politics, 
p. 99. 



THE TOLERANT NATION 67 

enjoy in its inner self 'that which is given to 
mankind as a whole.' ... It is this quality 
which especially fits us for leadership in the in- 
tellectual domain and imposes upon us the ob- 
ligation to maintain that position." As we out- 
siders, the prospective beneficiaries, listen to 
these words we know how the oysters in Alice in 
Wonderland felt toward the weeping carpenter; 
or how the keeper feels toward the embraces 
of a friendly elephant; or we remember how we 
ourselves once felt toward the stern parent 
who told us that it hurt him worse than it 
hurt us. 

The spectacle of coercive benevolence visited 
by one adult of the species upon another, may 
afford laughter to the gods; but that is because 
they happily dwell in a safe place where no one 
seeks to do them good. For the hapless object 
of benevolent intent it is a grim business. And 
since it is natural to benevolence to expand and to 
be untiring, it is inevitable that a general uneasi- 
ness should pervade the whole family of nations so 
long as any one of them is thus inspired and ded- 
icated. It is not only a dangerous thing, it is an 
inherently tragic thing like a great mind gone 
wrong. Cultural intolerance, the sense of a 
national mission, is a morbid excess of virtue. 



68 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

It is divided from the best and greatest things by 
a few degrees of more and less. It implies resolute 
purpose, self-respect, subordination to a cause. 
Its contempt for others, its consciousness, is like 
the hardness of a man who cannot be indulgent 
to others because he expects so much himself. 

La Mettrie said that an invisible fibre would 
suffice to make an idiot of an Erasmus. It may 
take a cerebral lesion to cause mental paranoia, 
but moral paranoia may be caused by something 
even less evident and ponderable. A little dif- 
ference of attitude, scarcely to be remarked at 
all save in its effects, makes the difference be- 
tween seriousness and censoriousness, between 
idealism and fanaticism, between loyalty and 
bigotry, between zeal and aggression. The cru- 
cial attitude which thus preserves moral sanity 
is a recognition of one's own fallibility, a sense 
of humor regarding oneself. It is humor that 
sweetens nationality, as it sweetens individual- 
ity and keeps it from spoiling. There are not 
many things that a man may not say if he will 
occasionally betray by a smile, or by the look 
in his eye, that he knows how it sounds from 
your point of view. It is scarcely possible for 
national pride and self-love to be too great, pro- 
vided it be accompanied by the saving grace of 



THE TOLERANT NATION 69 

self-criticism, and by a general sense of a some- 
thing so much bigger than oneself as to make 
comparisons ridiculous. Nations, hke individuals, 
need perpetually to recover their sense of propor- 
tion by reminding themselves of their liability to 
error, or of their need of all possible light from 
all possible sources on those questions which are 
so great as to be almost hopeless. 

Tolerance springs from a recognition of one's 
own limitations, from the feeling that there is 
too much to the truth, or to civilization, for any 
one group of men to fathom or compass. Such 
is the spirit of Mill's plea for individualism: 
"That mankind are not infallible; that their 
truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; 
that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the 
fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, 
is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a 
good, until mankind are much more capable than 
at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, 
are principles apphcable to men's modes of ac- 
tion, not less than to their opinions. As it is 
useful that while mankind are imperfect there 
should be different opinions, so is it that there 
should be different experiments of living; that 
free scope should be given to varieties of char- 
acter, short of injury to others; and that the 



70 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

worth of different modes of life should be proved 
practically, when any one thinks fit to try them."^ 

The just relation between independent nations 
is precisely that which underlies the higher forms 
of intercourse between independent individuals. 
Friendship, rivalry, commerce, war, discussion, 
partnership, may aU be ennobled by this relation. 
It consists in mutual respect. It is much more 
than an affair of manners. It means that each 
acknowledges in the other that power of judgment 
and self-determination, in which his own man- 
hood consists. As each judges for himself and 
devotes himself with resolution to what he deems 
good, so he recognizes the same finaHty and self- 
sufficiency in others. He respects in others what 
he respects in himself, and since he receives re- 
spect from the object to which he gives it, he can 
be respectful without ceasing to be self-respecting. 

In essentials the same relation must underlie 
the intercourse of nations. Each believes in it- 
self, and judges by its own standards. But this 
very loyalty and resoluteness will create an 
admiration for the same quahty in other nations. 
It is as though one nation were to say to an- 
other : ^ ' Your ways are outlandish, and your judg- 
ments wrong, but I doubt not mine seem equally 

^ On Liberty, chap. III. 



THE TOLERANT NATION 71 

so to you. Which of us has the better of the 
argument, God only knows. We beheve that we 
have, but we enjoy no pecuHar immunity from 
error. Perhaps we can persuade you that you 
are wrong. Perhaps it will turn out that we are 
both half right and half wrong. Meanwhile there 
is room for us both if we are willing to make it." 

Such a national spirit conduces, like MilFs 
individualism, to a rich variety of type, and to 
the mutual aid of many minds, each trying its 
own experiments and attacking in its own way 
the common problems of civilization. It is an 
indispensable condition of any peace save the 
peace in which arrogance dominates slavishness. 
If nations, like individuals, are to be allowed any 
pride or behef in themselves, or the courage of 
their convictions, then if there is not to be perpet- 
ual war, there must be a general spirit of tolerance 
— a willingness to respect what one cannot agree 
with or even understand. 

But tolerance is not to be prized merely as a 
means of diversity or of safety; for it directly 
elevates the tone of national life. A man is seen 
at his best when associating with those he regards 
as his equals. Sycophancy and superiority, ser- 
vility and mastery, conduce equally to the warp- 
ing of character. The man who can enjoy inter- 



72 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

course only with his superiors or inferiors, who 
must play the toady or the bully, and does not 
know how to look any man horizontally in the 
eye, is morally defective. So the finest quaHty 
of national life is reserved for those nations which 
can be faithful to themselves without loss of 
sanity. Such nations will not be restrained by 
force from oppressing their neighbors. They will 
rejoice in the existence of their neighbors, and 
will doubly rejoice in finding their neighbors 
worthy of their mettle. They will feel in the in- 
tercourse of proud and differing nations the same 
zest that is felt by a man among men. 

When peaceful rivalry or friendly co-operation 
takes the place of war, this attitude will be no less 
needed. For that same mutual respect which may 
ennoble even war, is all that will save peace from 
a spirit of easy acquiescence, or from a mean con- 
tentiousness. Peace itself has to be redeemed, 
and that which alone will save it will be an eager 
championship of differing national ideals, a gen- 
erous rivalry in well-doing, the athlete's love of a 
strong opponent, and the positive relish for di- 
verse equality. 



IV 



IMPRESSIONS OF A PLATTSBURG 
RECRUIT 

IT is a mistake to suppose that a soldier's im- 
pedimenta are merely accessory. From the 
time when you first gratefully borrow them from 
the ordnance and quartermaster's tents to the 
time when you still more thankfully deliver them 
up, you revolve about them. In place of the 
ordinary organic sensations, they supply while 
you possess them the nucleus of the consciousness 
of self. Though much is made of the ceremony, 
there is really no credit in returning these objects 
to the United States Government. The real 
merit is in borrowing them at all. This is per- 
haps the bravest act a soldier is called upon to 
perform. There are, let it be understood, some 
twenty-five separate articles in this borrowed 
equipment, including half a shelter-tent, one 
rifle, one canteen, one poncho, five pegs, etc., 
and to these one is ordered to add articles of 
toilet and personal apparel, bringing the total 

73 



74 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

number to over thirty. These, when once you 
have put them together, you acquire as a part of 
yourself, like a permanent hump. They might be 
folded, hooked, and strapped together in a thou- 
sand ways; they must be folded, hooked, and 
strapped together in one way, and in only one 
way. And then they must be taken apart again, 
and combined anew for each day's journey; 
which is one of the most successful of the several 
standard devices for protecting the soldier from 
the corrupting influence of leisure. 

When you advance upon an imaginary enemy, 
your corporal, whom you have learned to watch 
as a dog his master, shouts "Follow me!" You 
are wearing your hump, with its various outlying 
parts, such as the rifle in your hand and the can- 
teen on your hip. By bending your body until 
your back is parallel with the ground, you are 
able to simulate running. The gait as well as 
the contour resembles the camePs; but alas! you 
enjoy no such natural adaptation for pack-bear- 
ing, nor for the rude contacts with earth that 
await you. For after loping forward some twenty- 
five yards, you are ordered to "lie down.'' 

This is not to be construed as an invitation to 
enjoy a well-earned rest. On the contrary, your 
torture is about to begin. In civihan Hfe it is 



IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 75 

customary when lying down to select some spot 
or object which yields sHghtly to the pressure of 
the body, or corresponds somewhat to its out- 
lines. But in skirmish formation you lie down in 
your place; if you are a rear-rank man, then 
half a pace to the right of your file-leader. The 
chances are one hundred to otie that the spot fits 
you very badly. Nevertheless, down you go. 
You then hoist up on your left elbow, and address 
your rifle in the direction of the enemy. Your 
whole consciousness is now concentrated in the 
elbow. This member, which was never intended 
as an extremity, rests in all likeHhood upon a 
rough-edged piece of granite separated from your 
bone by one thickness of flannel shirt. The rifle 
presses mercilessly upon it. Your pack, thrown 
forward in your fall, rests upon the back of your 
neck, adds itself to the weight upon your elbow, 
and renders it almost impossible — ^judged by 
civilian standards, altogether impossible — to look 
along the sights of your rifle. The pain in the 
elbow is soon followed by a sharp cramp in the 
wrist. When these parts have become sufiiciently 
numb for you to attend to minor discomforts, 
you begin to realize that you are lying on your 
bolo knife, and that your canteen is sticking into 
your right hip. 



76 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

At this moment the platoon leader orders you 
to "fire faster," and with a desperate contortion 
you reach around to the small of your back and 
grope for a slip of cartridges with which to reload 
your rifle. Then "Cease firing!'' "Prepare to 
rush!" and again "Follow me!" — this time not 
only to a prone position, but from a prone posi- 
tion. You are carefully enjoined that you must 
get up running and lie down running, lest you 
shall at any time present a fixed target to the 
enemy. You dig a hold with your foot, summon 
your last reserves of strength, totter forward 
with all your goods hanging, dangHng, dragging 
about you, and soon resume business with that 
elbow exactly where you left off. This is called 
"advancing by rushes," and it is customary to 
do it for distances of a thousand yards or more 
in instalments of fifty yards or less. It is capped 
by a bayonet charge in which after drawing the 
reluctant bayonet with the right hand from just 
behind the left ear, and fumbling hastily about 
for the proper grooves and sockets, you expend 
your last ounce of strength in a desperate sprint 
up-hill. 

Now in this description I have made no refer- 
ence to the enemy. In fact there is no reference 
to the enemy, at least no personal reference. 
There is a vague sense of the enemy's direction, 



IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 77 

described as "twelve o'clock" if it be immediately 
ahead, or "one o'clock" if it be a little to the 
right, etc. But you entertain no murderous 
thoughts except for the person, luckily unknown, 
who invented your pack; and you are not appre- 
hensive or sorry for the enemy, for you are too 
profoundly, too whole-heartedly sorry for your- 
self. 

In all this there is a most extraordinary altera- 
tion of one's scale of values. I think I can under- 
stand something of the mind of the soldier in 
the trenches who welcomes the order to stand 
erect, preferring the chance of death to another 
moment of agonizing cramp. At such times re- 
mote memories and prospects, the normal hopes 
and fears of life, are expelled by importunate 
sensations. One is either too acutely wretched, 
or too gloriously happy, for either anxiety or 
regret. The range of consciousness is narrowed 
to aches and pains, or to such soul-satisfying joys 
as full respiration and restored circulation. 

There are compensations in hardship, wholly 
unsuspected by those who have not lived through 
them. To stretch one's limbs without a pack, to 
sit by the roadside against a bank, to drink luke- 
warm water out of an aluminum can, to eat beans 
out of a tub, to bathe by hundreds in one shallow 



78 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

brook, to mitigate the natural roughness of one's 
stubble bed with a bit of straw — ^it requires some 
cultivation to raise these experiences to the pitch 
of ecstasy. But it is worth while. When, in 
decorous society, one is informed that "Dinner 
is served," it is in apologetic and doubtful tones, 
as though the announcement were intrusive or 
unwelcome. But with what glad emotion does 
one spring forward, unashamed, with mess-kit 
extended for instant use, when one hears the 
hearty roar of the Falstaffian undershirted cook: 
"E Company ! Come and git it V^ 

There is a popular belief that it is a fine thing 
to be an officer, or even a "non-com.'' And it is 
doubtless important that this behef should be 
professed in training camps. But volumes might 
be written confidentially on the luxury of being 
a private. When, in one of the occasional lulls 
between the stated exercises of the day, some 
sergeant shouts down the company street, "Squad 
leaders come and get ammunition," or "Non- 
commissioned officers report at the first ser- 
geant's tent," then if you are a private there 
steals over you the delicious realization that it 
does not mean you. It is like sick-call when one 
is well. I despair of making an uninitiated person 
realize the full signfficance of an order that does 



IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 79 

not mean you. Your poor corporal scurries out 
of the tent, you hastily take possession of the 
much-coveted ramrod which he has been forced 
to leave behind, and then and there, thanks to 
your corporaFs harder lot, you enjoy a genuine 
sense of leisure. Not that you do nothing — only 
exhaustion justifies that. But you clean your 
gun with a cosey feeling that you have got at 
least that day's work well in hand. 

Let me hasten to add that cleaning your gun 
does not mean the same thing as making your 
gun clean. It means an infinite series of motions 
approaching cleanness as a limit which they 
never reach. Each rag seems to come through 
the muzzle blacker than the last. The captain 
calls special attention to screw-heads and other 
minute cavities, and you poke individual grains 
of sand about in them with the point of a pin; 
but you never get them all. The simple child- 
like faith with which this task of Sisyphus is 
performed is touching. It becomes in time a 
sort of harmless mania, a chronic activity which 
one automatically resumes whenever not diverted 
by more urgent business. 

Corporals and sergeants enjoy no immunity 
from rifle-cleaning, pack-carrying, or any of the 
thousand duties that keep a private on a panting 
dog-trot from reveille to taps, and since they are 



8o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

burdened with other duties as well, their lot is 
hard. The worst of it is that they have to think 
and make decisions. At least they have to try, 
which is just as bad. But the last thing that is 
wanted of a private is that he should have ideas 
of his own. Even when in doubt as to his orders, 
a private who is fully alive to his prerogatives 
will ask his corporal, and wait patiently and rest- 
fully for him to find out. The great thing is that 
a private can, by an adroit passivity, both earn 
praise for his soldierly obedience and at the same 
time ease his mind. With his body he has to be 
everlastingly at it, and there is no escaping that 
pack. But the non-commissioned officer is a 
pack-animal who is required also to think — an 
unparalleled cruelty; while the commissioned 
officer, if he has less on his back, has so much the 
more on his mind. Oh, the luxury of the vacant 
mind! Oh, the restfulness of the obedient and 
incurious will! Oh, the deep peace of hooking 
the canteen under the fifth right-hand pocket of 
the belt, without having to decide between the 
fourth or the fifth, or inquire why it should be 
either ! 

Soldierly experiences are common experiences, 
and are hallowed by that fact. You are asked to 



IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 8i 

do no more than hundreds of others, as good or 
better than yourself, do with you. If you rmse 
your greasy mess-kit in a tub of greasier water, 
you are one of many gathered Hke thirsty birds 
about a roadside puddle. If you fill your lungs 
and the pores of your sweaty skin with dust, 
fellows in adversity are all about you, looking 
grimier than you feel; and your very complaints 
uttered in chorus partake of the quality of defiant 
song. To walk is one thing, to march, albeit 
with sore feet and aching back, is another and 
more triumphant. It is "Hail ! Hail ! the gang's 
all here," or "Glorious ! Glorious ! one keg of beer 
for the four of us" — it matters not what the 
words signify, provided they have a rhythmic 
swing and impart a choral sense of collective 
unity. Special privilege and personal fastidious- 
ness, all that marks one individual off from the 
rest in taste or in good fortune, seeks to hide it- 
self. Instead there is the common uniform, pre- 
scribed to the last string and button, the common 
nakedness of the daily swim, the common routine, 
the common hardships, and in and through it all 
the common loyalty and purpose. 

To many this is the first dawning consciousness 
of the fellowship of country. Patriotism is not 
praised or taught, it is taken for granted. But 



82 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

though inarticulate, it is unmistakably the master 
motive. There is a fine restraint in military cere- 
mony that enables even the purest product of 
New England self-repression to feel — ^without 
awkwardness or self-consciousness. Every late 
afternoon at the last note of retreat, the flag is 
lowered, and the band plays "The Star-Spangled 
Banner." Men in ranks are ordered to atten- 
tion. Men and officers out of ranks stand at 
attention where they are, facing the flag, and 
saluting as the music ceases. Thus to stand at 
attention toward sundown, listening to solemn 
music sounding faintly in the distance, to see 
and to feel that every fellow soldier is standing 
also rigid and intent — to experience this reverent 
and collective silence which forbears to say what 
cannot be said, is at once to understand and to 
dedicate that day's work. 



V 



THE FACT OF WAR AND THE HOPE OF 
PEACE 

RADICAL pacifism and radical militarism 
both rest upon a one-sided view of the 
great human problem of international polity. 
In coming to see the error of both of these forms 
of propaganda, we shall, I believe, approximate 
to something like a balanced and adequate view. 
Radical pacifism may be said to contain two 
ideas, non-resistance and neutralism. Non-re- 
sistance is commonly confused with unselfishness. 
As a matter of fact, however, under present con- 
ditions it would mean saving one's own skin and 
one's own feelings while others' suffered. No 
one will dispute the right of an individual to sub- 
mit passively to abuse, provided he receives the 
abuse upon his own person. There may even be 
a certain dignity in such non-resistance. An in- 
dividual may be "too proud to fight" — ^f or him- 
self. The real test of the principle comes when 

you apply it to the defense of those you love. 

83 



84 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

No man should announce himself an advocate 
of non-resistance who is not prepared to acquiesce 
in the violation of his wife or daughter. No 
woman can be at heart non-resistant unless she 
means that she is willing to surrender her child 
to torture. No American can renounce the ap- 
peal to arms unless he can think with equanimity 
of the extinction of his race or the crushing of 
those institutions which now stir his civic pride 
and loyalty. For these are the evils which an 
attacking enemy may seek to perpetrate, and 
which defensive warfare aims to forestall. The 
enemy's will in the matter cannot be controlled. 
It takes two to make peace, but either party 
may at his own discretion threaten the other 
with the blackest evil which his imagination can 
invent. He may force upon whomever he elects 
to be his enemy the dilemma of armed resistance 
or of submission to any outrage that his victim 
may deem most unendurable. To be non-re- 
sistant must mean, then, that one regards nothing 
as unendurable — even the destruction of what one 
loves or admires or has sworn to serve and protect. 
There is a theory that non-resistance will soften 
arrogance and disarm brutality. This theory is 
based upon the extension to group actions and 
emotions, of influences that may occasionally be 



WAR AND PEACE 85 

exerted by one personality upon another. Collec- 
tive non-resistance evokes only contempt. The 
effect of non-resistance when practised by a whole 
race or nation is unmistakably apparent in the 
history of the Jews and of China. A caste or 
conquering race that is accustomed to the meek- 
ness of inferiors grows hard and arrogant. Unless 
in the last analysis men or nations are ready to 
fight for their honor and their treasures, material 
and spiritual, they raise up enemies whom they 
invite to despoil them. Those are respected who 
possess reserves of rugged determination, who 
wear a quiet and unconscious air of willingness 
to defend with their lives whatever they hold to 
be priceless — their goods, their country, their 
friends, their loved ones, their lives, or their 
principles. 

The other idea which distinguishes radical 
pacifism is neutralism. This means refusing to 
take sides, reserving judgment in the presence of 
the great struggle. It manifests itself in the pres- 
ent crisis in the attitude of those who declare 
that all parties are equally to blame or equally 
innocent. It is an easy-going policy, for it saves 
the pain of decision and permits the mind to 
muddle along in a state of flabby vacillation and 
procrastination. The present crisis is like every 



86 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

great political and social crisis in that it is the 
resultant of many forces, which it takes hard 
thinking and clear seeing to disentangle. If one 
is to stand aside because a problem is complicated 
one may as well go into a hermit's ceU aCnd be 
done with it. To be effective in this world is to 
hazard a judgment and to co^nmit oneself to it. 

The worst of it is that neutrality may so easily 
become a habit and render one permanently 
hesitant and weak. It begets indifference, when 
it does not spring from it. If one cares much for 
one's flag one will find it flying somewhere and 
follow it. Furthermore, those who proclaim 
neutralism as a part of the creed of pacifism for- 
get that the possibihty of permanent peace de- 
pends upon the cultivation of sentiment and 
opinion. It is absolutely impossible that there 
should be a pubHc opinion strong enough to 
secure peace, which shall not be terrible to those 
who disturb the peace. One cannot hate lawless- 
ness and brutahty without hating those who 
perpetrate or instigate them. To be tolerant of 
manifest and present evil is to emasculate one's 
moral consciousness. In that future time when 
state war is as exceptional as private war is to- 
day, it will be necessary that a lawless state shall 
be visited with the same resentment and swift 



WAR AND PEACE ^^ 

condemnation that is now visited upon the law- 
less individual. When, therefore, one seeks in 
the name of peace to suppress the strong senti- 
ment that is widely felt against that nation which 
surpasses all others in violence and cruelty, one 
is counteracting the very force by which one's 
cause may hope some day to triumph. 

Non-resistance and neutrahsm are the false 
friends of peace. They bring disrepute upon it. 
There can be no propaganda that is effective and 
morally sound which requires one to yield weakly 
to hostile attack, or to emasculate one's judgment. 
If there be any excuse for these excesses in the 
name of peace, it is the like tendency to exag- 
geration which marks the exponents of war. 

False or radical mihtarism is also characterized 
by two ideas. The first of these is the belief in the 
necessity or institutional character of war. Plato, 
as a matter of course, divided his Republic into 
warriors, merchants, and guardians. He regarded 
war as a natural function of the political organism, 
and the warrior as the embodiment of spiritedness 
and courage. But we are now coming to the view 
that war is a disease to which the race is peculiarly 
liable in its infancy, and from which it may hope 
to secure immunity in its maturity. War is now 
known to be natural not in any final or ideal 



8>S THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

sense, but in the sense of being crude and primi- 
tive. It is one of the things that civihzation seeks 
not to perfect, but to outgrow and put aside alto- 
gether. 

Viewed in this light, the soldier is the symbol 
not of human attainment, but of affliction and 
painful necessity. He is as much out of place in 
the perfected society as the rat-catcher or the 
poHceman. The cost of war has grown unbear- 
able, and is now reckoned more accurately. Its 
effects have grown more fatal in proportion as 
social organization has grown more elaborate and 
more delicately adjusted. Its essential clumsiness 
and wastefulness, its swift and prodigious de- 
structiveness, are intolerable in an age devoted 
to constructive and progressive civilization. 
Meanwhile its methods have so altered that it 
has almost wholly ceased to be an art or a ro- 
mantic adventure which may appeal to the 
amateur or which a man may follow as a polite 
vocation. It is even ceasing to possess a code 
of honor. It is ugly, sordid and prosaic, offensive 
to taste and repugnant to humanity. 

We have also come to understand that the pro- 
pensity to war is not incurable. It is not neces- 
sitated by any law of human nature. Even were 
self-interest the law of human nature, that law 



WAR AND PEACE 89 

would dictate peace and not war. For security is 
more profitable than lawless aggression, and prop- 
erty is worth more than plunder. But self-interest 
is not the law of human nature. There are instincts 
of neighborliness which increase in their range 
as news and travel increase the circle of one's 
neighborhood. There are some instincts, it is 
true, which lend themselves to warlike uses; 
and owing to an accidental emphasis in psycholog- 
ical theory, we have recently heard much of them. 
But though there be an instinct of pugnacity, 
there is no instinct of war. War is only one of 
divers ways in which the instinct of pugnacity 
may find expression. One may be equally pugna- 
cious in the interest of saving souls or eradicating 
disease. One may even be pugnacious in the 
cause of peace. For just because pugnacity is an 
instinct, it is modifiable and plastic. Not only 
is it balanced by other and contrary instincts, 
but it does not issue in conduct until it has as- 
sumed the form of habit, purpose or conscious 
will. Man has instincts, but he is not possessed 
by them. He is called an intelligent or rational 
being because he can check, regulate and guide 
his instincts by the Hght of knowledge and direct 
them to the good ends that his judgment may 
adopt. 



90 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

A fatalistic acquiescence in war, the acceptance 
of it as permanent and inevitable, is the first sign 
of the radical miHtarist. The second is suspicion 
or misanthropy. Within certain limits it is an 
almost imfailing rule of human conduct that we 
shall receive from men what we manifestly ex- 
pect of them. He who goes about with scorn or 
truculence or cold suspicion written on his face 
will find it reflected in every face he sees. He 
who does not expect to be spoken to will find 
himself cut by his acquaintances; the man of 
cold reserve will find himself Hving in a com- 
munity of snobs. On the other hand, a child 
wins kind words and kind looks because he so 
unhesitatingly and confidently assumes that he 
is going to get them. The misanthrope thinks 
that he finds confirmation of his opinion from the 
facts, whereas in reahty he causes the facts him- 
self. 

A like phenomenon appears in the relations of 
nations. Suspicion begets suspicion; suspicion 
mounts to hatred, which begets hatred; while 
all the time a different original attitude might 
have stimulated a latent kindliness or called at- 
tention to common interests and so have led to 
a habit of friendship. Mischievous gossip may 
do much to create artificial enmities between one 



WAR AND PEACE 91 

man and another. Between nations this danger 
is magnified by the difficulty of obtaining news, 
and by the possibiHty that the very instrumental- 
ities of news may be used to provoke and foster 
enmity. There is therefore need of a good will 
that shall not only be cordial and resolute, but 
that shall accord the benefit of the doubt. There 
was never greater need of such an attitude than 
at the present time, nor a better appKcation than 
our relations with Japan. A sneering contempt 
for the motives of others, a quickness to believe 
malicious or chance rumors when they agree 
with the creed of selfishness, and to charge every 
profession of disinterestedness with insincerity — 
nothing could be better calculated than this to 
suppress whatever impulses to generosity, candor 
and cordiaHty our human nature prompts. Such 
an attitude is neither enlightened nor humane. 
It is a persistent belief only in the worse possi- 
bilities, and so is unscientific; it acts as a re- 
straint upon the better possibilities, and so is 
mischievous. 

Such are the extravagances of a false pacifism 
and of a false militarism. In so far as they are 
committed to these extravagances both propa- 
gandas must be rejected. It is an intolerable 
dilemma which forces one to choose between being 



92 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

a sentimentalist and being a reactionary. The 
great majority of thinking men must dechne to be 
either. The association of both propagandas 
with their extravagances tends to a state of hope- 
lessness and inaction, and obscures the real prob- 
lem. It is necessary to move forward in this 
matter, as in all other great affairs that involve 
collective action, by a series of steps that shall 
secure new benefits without forfeiting old. What 
all men must desire to secure is a durable peace 
without loss of liberty, honor or self-respect. 
Any plan by which one buys off one's enemy by 
the surrender of independence or principle is 
wholly beside the point. By tame submission 
to allow any belligerent to have his way is to 
confirm him in his creed of lawless aggression. 
On the other hand, to fall back bhndly on the old 
shibboleths of nationahsm and patriotism is to 
acknowledge the failure of civiHzation. It follows 
that nations must so fight for their liberties and 
their principles as to bring that day nearer when 
it shall no longer be necessary to fight for them. 
There is a wide-spread impression that there is 
something incompatible between these two at- 
titudes, the acceptance of war as a deplorable 
present necessity, and the pursuit of peace as a 
glorious hope. But there is no such incom- 



WAR AND PEACE 93 

patibility. On the contrary, such a mixture of 
expediency and idealism is one of the most fa- 
miliar and universal facts of life. That which dis- 
tinguishes constructive progress from mere pious 
wishing is the use of present means to bring one 
forward toward one's end. The present means 
will always be of that age which one seeks to 
leave behind. It is necessary to walk until one 
can ride, and to ride until one can fly. It is only 
the fanatical mind which fails to see so obvious a 
fact, or to govern itself by a principle so funda- 
mental and so indispensable to all forward action. 

I submit, then, that we need a propaganda 
that shall take the middle ground, and recognize 
the real problem. In place of war parties and 
peace parties that exaggerate their own half- 
truths, and ignore all other half-truths, thus 
blinding our eyes and impotently consuming our 
passions and energies, we need the wise and 
balanced mind, adjusted to the needs of the 
hour and inspired with hope of the future. 

Persons so minded will agree that there is war 
in fact, and that so long as there is war there is 
danger. Where there is danger any thoughtful 
mind must commend caution and foresight, so 
that the danger may be well and effectively met 
in proportion to its imminence and its magnitude. 



94 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

But it is no less imperative that the hope of peace 
should be kept bright and that the purpose to 
attain permanent peace should be undaunted. 
Prophecy and inspiration are as important as 
efficiency and trained judgment. It is no less 
important to contrive new social and political de- 
vices and to agitate for their application and trial. 
Projects for disarmament, for an international 
court, or for the publicity of diplomatic negotia- 
tions, should not be regarded as vain imaginings 
because they depart from ancient practise, but as 
inventions by which after trial and selection men 
may eventually forge the tools by which to es- 
tabHsh a new and better practise. In short, the 
upward road of progress can be ascended only 
by one who both keeps his footing secure, and 
looks ahead with ardor and imagination. 



VI 

WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 

NOT long ago a newspaper despatch from 
Leicester, England, described the untimely 
fate of a travelling band of pacifist preachers who 
styled themselves "The Fellowship of Recon- 
cihation." It appears that the good patriots of 
Leicester beat them soundly, burned their camp 
and equipment, and concluded the matter by 
singing "Tipperary" and "God Save the King" 
over the ashes. 

The incident epitomizes the absurd but deeply 
tragic plight of man. His bravest and most ex- 
alted purposes, those of nationality and human- 
ity, are driving him to self-destruction. There 
is more of tragedy in this than a present loss of 
life and material goods; there is a dreadful sug- 
gestion of doom, as when one first detects symp- 
toms of an incurable disease. There is a seeming 
fatality in life by which right motives impel man 
to work evil. Intelligence, self-sacrifice, devo- 
tion to a cause, those quahties of mind and will 

95 



96 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

on which we have been taught to pride ourselves, 
seem only to make men more terrible, or more 
weak, according as they turn to deeds or to 
meditation. To take up arms and destroy, or 
to sit passively by while destruction rages unre- 
buked — there is apparently neither virtue nor 
happiness in either course. If such be the pre- 
dicament of man, it is not surprising that many 
are praying that the curtUin be rung down and 
an end made of the whole sorry business. 

In what I have here to say I address those who 
are still determined to think the matter through 
notwithstanding the fact that, as Mr. TuUiver 
says, "thinking is mighty puzzHng work." De- 
spair we may reserve as a course of last resort. 
Likewise the death-bed consolations of religion 
by which human weal and woe are left to the in- 
scrutable wisdom of Almighty God. When the 
present scene becomes too painful we may shut 
our eyes, or turn to some celestial vision. But I 
for one cannot yet absolve myself from respon- 
sibility. There is a task of civilization and social 
progress to which man has so solemnly pledged 
himself that he cannot abandon it with honor. 
And in this hour of trial that pledge requires us 
to form a plan of action which shall be neither 
an act of blind faith nor a confession of failure. 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 97 

We must endeavor both to see our way and to 
make our way. 

How shall the constructive work of civilization 
be saved and promoted? It would be a much 
simpler matter if it were only one's "inward 
peace" that was at stake. Mr. Bertrand Russell 
tells us that "the greatest good that can be 
achieved in this life is to have will and desire 
directed to universal ends, purged of the self- 
assertion which belongs to instinctive will." ^ 
But there is one greater good, and that is the 
accomplishment of these imiversal ends. This is 
a much more baffling and hazardous undertaking. 
It requires a man not only to make up his mind, 
but to bring things to pass. It becomes neces- 
sary to use the harsh and dangerous instruments 
by which things are done in this world. Civiliza- 
tion is not saved by the mere purging of one's 
heart, but by the work of one's hands. The forces 
of destruction must be met, each according to its 
kind, by the forces of deliverance. The belief 
that when a man has struck an attitude, and 
has braved it out in the midst of a rough and 
vulgar world, he has somehow solved the prob- 
lem and done his duty, underlies much of the 
pacific sentiment that is now abroad. It is a 

^Atlantic Monthly y August, 1915, p. 267. 



98 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

dangerous error, because it makes the difficulties 
of life seem so much simpler than they really 
are, and may teach a man to be perfectly satisfied 
with himself when he has really only evaded the 
issue. 

For what does this philosophy of inward recti- 
tude really mean and imply? In the first place, 
it is self-centred and individualistic. Life becomes 
an affair between each man and his own soul, a 
sort of spiritual toilet before the mirror of self- 
consciousness. Social relations only furnish oc- 
casions for the perfecting of self, trials by which 
one may test the firmness of one's own mind. 
The state, economic life, and other forms of co- 
operative association, lose their intrinsic impor- 
tance, and tend to be replaced by a select frater- 
nity of kindred spirits, in which each is confirmed 
in his aloofness from the vain hopes and petty 
fears of the world of action. 

The crucial test of such a principle of life is 
afforded by the presence of a danger which 
threatens others whom one may be pledged to 
serve, or some larger good extending beyond the 
limits of one's personal life. Whether to save 
one's own peace of mind at the expense of one's 
own fife or property is a question which may well 
be left to the individual to decide for himself- 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 99 

But as so often happens, this relatively simple 
question is also relatively trivial. Such a choice 
is rarely if ever presented. Certainly the emer- 
gency in which war arises is never one which a 
sympathetic and imaginative person can meet 
merely by applying the scale of his own personal 
preferences. It is not one's own person that is 
imperilled. As a matter of fact it requires the 
most colossal egotism to suppose that the enemy 
has any interest whatever in one's own person. 
It is the collective Hfe, the state, the national 
tradition and ambition, the chosen and idealized 
civilization, the general state of happiness and 
well-being in the community — ^it is these that are 
in danger, and it is these that one must weigh 
against one's private tranquillity. 

If the matter be viewed in this light, it is a little 
absurd to step forward and gallantly offer one's 
life in exchange for being allowed the privilege 
of dying innocuously ! Such an offer will sound 
heroic to no one but oneself, and to oneself 
only in so far as one has lost both sympathy and 
imagination. It is doubtless vexatious that one 
cannot be allowed to choose for oneself alone, 
but such is the hard condition of life. When one 
chooses to take up arms or to suffer the enemy 
to triumph, one is disposing, not of oneself, but 



loo THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

of all those lives, possessions and institutions 
which the enemy threatens and which it lies 
within one's power to defend. 

But the philosophy of inward rectitude is not 
merely self-centred, it is also formal and prudish. 
It is pervaded with a spirit of correct deport- 
ment. Its aversion to war is largely due to a 
feeling that war is banal, and incompatible with 
the posture of personal dignity. The philosopher's 
cloak must be thrown aside if one is to adopt the 
graceless and immoderate gait of the soldier. 
War is intolerable, just as running is intolerable 
to one who has come to enjoy the full measure of 
self-respect only when he is permitted to move 
with a slow and rhythmic strut. 

But this is the antithesis of the spirit of enter- 
prise. Genuine devotion to an end, intently work- 
ing for it, will render one unconscious of the inci- 
dental movements and postures it involves,. A 
formalist would not He on his back under an au- 
tomobile, because such an attitude would not 
comport with a preconceived model of himself as 
an upright, heavenward being of a superior order; 
whereas a traveller, bent on reaching his destina- 
tion, would not shrink even from the aboriginal 
slime, if only he might find a way to go forward. 
Similarly if it were all a matter of propriety of 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? loi 

demeanor, one could refuse the ugliness of war 
and shut one's eyes to the sequel. But if one's 
heart be set on saving civilization, so laboriously 
achieved, so fragile and perishable, then one's 
personal attitude is contemptibly insignificant. 
All that really matters is the fidelity with which 
one has done one's work and kept one's trust. 

Nor will it suffice to quote Plato, and take 
comfort in the thought that the ideals are them- 
selves eternal and incorruptible. For that which 
enemies threaten and champions defend, is not 
the ideal itself, but some earthly, mortal thing 
which is made in its image. The labor and art 
of life is not to create justice and happiness in 
the abstract, but to build just cities and promote 
happy lives. And these can be burned with fire 
and slain by the sword. If one is prepared to 
renounce the existent world and the achieve- 
ments of history, one may perhaps escape the 
need of war. But let no man fail to realize that 
he has then virtually given up the whole creation 
of the race, all the fruits of all the painful toil 
of men, even the spiritual fruits of culture and 
character. For these spiritual fruits are indi- 
vidual lives which may be as utterly destroyed as 
the work of man's hands. 

It is futile to argue that the good life cannot 



I02 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

be destroyed by an enemy. It is true that it 
cannot be corrupted, and made evil. But it may 
be killed. The good Hfe is more than mere good- 
ness; it is living goodness, embodied in existence 
and conduct. He who slays a just man or anni- 
hilates a free and happy society, undoes the work 
of moral progress as fatally, nay more fatally, 
than he who corrupts them with injustice and 
slavery. For in the latter case there at least 
remain the latent capacities by which civilization 
may be rebuilt. Those who insist on the distinc- 
tion between might and right and accuse the 
warrior of practising might in the name of right, 
are likely on their part to forget that the work 
of civihzation is to make the right also mighty, so 
that it may obtain among men and prevail. This 
end is not to be realized by any philosophy of 
abstinence and contemplation, but only by a use 
of the physical forces by which things are brought 
to exist and by which alone they are made se- 
cure against violence and decay. 

Having considered the philosophy by which 
men avoid war, let us now consider another 
philosophy by which men make war, with an 
equally easy conscience and an equally untroubled 
mind. I refer to the philosophy of nationahsm: 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 103 

the worship of the individual state as an end in 
itself, and the justification of conduct solely by 
the principle of patriotism. Such a creed may 
be idealized by a beHef that the ultimate good 
lies in the progressive strife of opposing national 
ideals; a strife which is humanly discordant and 
tragic, but is rounded into some sort of all-saving 
harmony in the eternal whole. Practically this 
makes no difference except to add to the motive 
of national interest the sense of a heaven-sent 
mission. The only end by which the individual 
is required to judge his action is that of the power 
and glory of his own state. To that is merely 
added the dogma that national conquest and ag- 
grandizement are good for the world even if the 
poor world doesn't know it. By such a dogma 
a people whose international policy is unscru- 
pulously aggressive may enjoy at the same time 
an ecstatic conscience and a sense of philosophical 
enlightenment. Hence this is the most formida- 
ble and terrible of all philosophies. Its devastat- 
ing effects are manifest in the world to-day. 

There are two fatal errors in this philosophy. 
The first is the assumption that the state is some- 
thing apart from the happiness and well-being of 
its members. The state, contrived to serve men, 
becomes instead, through tradition, prestige and 



I04 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

its power to perpetuate its own agencies, an ob- 
ject of idolatrous worship. Under its spell free 
men forget their rights, wise men their reason, 
and good men their humanity. The second error 
is the dogma that the narrow loyalties of nations 
will best serve the universal good. There is no 
evidence for this. It is the joint product of na- 
tional bigotry and of an ethics manufactured 
by metaphysicians. The experience of the race 
points unmistakably to the fatally destructive 
character of narrow loyalties, and teaches the 
need of applying to national conduct the same 
standards of moderation, justice and good-will 
that are already generally applied to the relations 
of man and man. 

There is one further way of evading the real 
difficulty of our problem, but this can be dis- 
missed with a bare mention. I refer to the flip- 
pant and irresponsible scepticism which holds all 
human purposes to be equally vaHd because all 
are equally blind and dogmatic. The sceptic 
views with mild derision the attempts of man to 
justify his passions. He holds all nations to be 
equally at fault, equally self-deceived, and equally 
pitiful. The folly and discord of life do not sur- 
prise him, for he expects nothing better than 
that man should consume himself. On such a 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 105 

philosophy war and peace are not to be seriously 
argued, but accepted as fatahties, whose irony 
affords a refined enjoyment to the emancipated 
mind. 

These, then, are the philosophies of evasion 
and irresponsibility. Before accepting any of 
them it behooves one to be clearly conscious of 
what they imply. It is impossible here to argue 
these deeper questions through. It must suffice 
to point out that all of these philosophies are op- 
posed to the beliefs on which modern democratic 
societies are founded. Unless we are to renounce 
these beliefs, we must refuse in this grave crisis 
to listen to any counsel that is not hopeful and 
constructive, that does not recommend itself to 
reason, and that does not define a program of 
universal human betterment. When such a so- 
lution is firmly insisted on, the real difficulties of 
the problem appear. But though one may well 
be troubled to find the way, one may at least be 
saved from the greater evil of self-deception. 

There is no fair escape from the tragic paradox 
that man must destroy in order to save. Never 
before has this paradox been so vividly realized. 
Man goes forth with torch and powder to restore 
the primitive desolation, and to add to the nat- 



io6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

ural evils — ^from which he has barely escaped — 
more frightful evils of his own contriving. He 
does this in the name of home, country, hu- 
manity and God. Furthermore, he finds himself 
so situated that neither conscience nor reason 
permits him any other course. His very purpose 
of beneficence requires him to practise vandalism, 
cruelty and homicide upon a vast scale and with 
a refinement proportional to his knowledge and 
inventiveness. It may well seem credulous to 
find in this anything more than a fatal madness 
by which man is hastened to his doom. 

But there is just one angle from which it may 
be possible to discern some method in this mad- 
ness. We must learn to regard war, not as an 
isolated phenomenon, but as merely the most 
aggravated and the most impressive instance of 
the imiversal moral situation. This fundamental 
predicament of hfe, which gives rise to all moral 
perplexities, is the conflict of interests. When 
war is viewed in this light, we may then see in 
justifiable war a special application of the most 
general of all ethical principles, namely, the 
principle of discipline or provident restraint. Given 
the natural conflict of interests, this principle de- 
fines the only alternative to waste and mutual 
destruction. It means simply that under actual 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 107 

conditions the greatest abundance of life on the 
whole is to be secured only by a confining, prun- 
ing or uprooting of those special interests which 
imperil the stability and harmony of the whole. 

When such restraint is not self-imposed, it 
must be imposed externally. The first lessons in 
restraint are doubtless learned from rivals and 
enemies who are governed by selfish purposes 
of their own. But the moral principle proper 
appears only when restraint is exercised with a 
provident purpose, that is, for the sake of the 
greater good that will result; as when a man re- 
frains from excess for the sake of long Ufe, or re- 
spects his neighbor's property for the sake of a 
general security and prosperity. Similarly a 
teacher or parent may restrain a wilful child, 
and a ruler a lawless subject, in the interest of 
all, including the individual so restrained. It is 
customary to question such motives, but the 
hypocrite would have no success, nor the cynic 
any claim to critical penetration, were these 
motives not so common as to establish the rule. 
As a matter of fact they are as solidly psycholog- 
ical as any fact regarding human nature. 

Restraint, however exercised, is in its first 
effect negative and destructive. To set limits to 
an appetite, to bar the way to childish caprice, to 



io8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

forbid an act and call it crime, is in some degree 
to inflict pain and death, to destroy some living 
impulse. But it is none the less morally neces- 
sary. And it matters not whether the act of 
restraint be simple and unpremeditated or com- 
plex and calculated, involving hosts of men and 
all the complex mechanism of modem war. It 
is still possible, on the larger scale as on the 
smaller, that the act of restraint should be re- 
quired by a larger purpose which is constructive 
and humane. 

It is sometimes argued that an act of violence 
or coercion can have such a moral motive only 
when it is performed by a "neutral authority'' 
who has nothing to gain or lose by the transac- 
tion. It is further argued that, since in the case 
of international disputes no such disinterested 
party exists, no use of violence or coercion can 
be justified. Persons who reason in this way 
must be supposed to beheve in the miraculous 
origin of aU kings and policemen. The forcible 
prevention of robbeiy must to their mind have 
become just, when and only when there suddenly 
appeared on the scene a special heaven-sent race 
of beings wearing blue coats and billies, and 
having no passions or property of their own. 

As a matter of fact, however, robbers were first 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 109 

put down by the robbed. Their suppression was 
justified not because those who suppressed them 
gained nothing by it (for they certainly did gain), 
but because that suppression was enacted in be- 
half of a general community good in which the 
interests of the robber and his kind were also 
counted. And whatever be the historical genesis 
of the state, whether paternity or plunder, this 
much is certain: that the functions of the state 
were at first, and have been in a measure ever 
since, exercised by men who have derived per- 
sonal profit therefrom. The function of the 
state, its purpose of collective order, power and 
welfare, came into existence long ages before 
constitutions and charters of liberty made public 
office a public trust. Before men could learn to 
be governed well, they had to learn their first 
lessons of social restraint from whatever rude 
authorities were at hand. 

Whence, then, are we to expect those inter- 
national police to whom alone is to be intrusted 
the fxmction of restraining predatory nations, 
and races filled with the lust of conquest? Are 
they to descend from above, clothed in uniform 
and wearing the badge of their office? It takes 
little historical sense to realize that we must first 
live through an age in which the principle of 



no THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

international restraint slowly gains acceptance, 
and is exercised by those nations who, primarily 
moved by an imminent danger to themselves, act 
also consciously and expressly in behalf of the 
larger good of mankind. 

Let not any man say that the nation which 
feels itseK to be actuated by such a double mo- 
tive is insincere and hypocritical. This charge, 
if pressed home, would discredit all moral purpose 
whatsoever. Not only is it humanly possible 
that England, while saving herself, should at 
the same time wage war in behalf of the larger 
principles of freedom and international law; but 
all hope of a new order of things lies in the exis- 
tence of just such a resolve so to protect and 
promote one's own interest as at the same time 
to conduce to a like safety and weU-being in 
others. 

We have thus, I beheve, reached an under- 
standing of the general principle by which war is 
justified. The righteous war is that waged in 
behalf of a higher order in which both of the war- 
ring parties and others of their rank may live to- 
gether in peace. If one man restrains another he 
must ask no more for himself than he concedes 
to his enemy. This modicum which is consistent 
with a like privilege in others he calls his right, 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? iii 

and the law eventually defines it and invents 
special agents for its protection. 

A righteous civil war will be one in which a fac- 
tion is restrained in behalf of a national good which 
is conceived to include both factions. Whether 
correct or mistaken in their judgment, such a 
purpose undoubtedly actuated the nobler spirits 
of both North and South in the American Civil 
War. To the South it was a war for independence, 
and to the North a war for the Union. That is 
to say, the moral motive in each consisted of a 
conscious provision for the equal good of the 
other. Each, while most immediately moved 
by its special interest, believed that interest to 
agree with the best interest of the other. Each 
had its plan for both, the South aiming at a rela- 
tion of friendship between two autonomous neigh- 
bors, the North aiming at the common advantages 
of national coherence. Forces of destruction and 
ungovernable passions were let loose, and the 
most dreadful of tragedies was enacted. But the 
fact remains that such higher purposes did exist, 
and gave to the struggle its quahty of idealism. 
Most living Americans, even those descended 
from the men of the South, now believe that the 
North was right in the sense of being guided by 
a sounder judgment. 



112 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

That so furious a conflict should have divided 
men of equally high purpose, that even yet doubts 
should exist as to the merits of the dispute, is 
profoundly deplorable — deplorable in the sense 
that aU human blindness and frailty is deplorable. 
But it was not to be avoided by either scepticism 
or inaction. It was then, as always, a question 
of controlling events according to one's lights, or 
being controlled by them. There is no guarantee 
against the possibiHty of error, and in judgments 
regarding poHtical policy the margin of error is 
large. Even if such a guarantee were theoreti- 
cally possible, events would not wait for one to 
find it. A man must act when emergencies arise 
and circumstances permit. The likelihood of error 
does not absolve him from the duty of making up 
his mind and acting accordingly. To be honestly 
mistaken is at least better than to be impotently 
non-committal. For an honest mistake is at least 
an experiment in poHcy and a lesson learned. 

The forcible restraint of one individual by 
another, or of one faction by another, may thus 
be said to be justified when it is necessary to the 
establishment of a relationship which is tolerable 
to both. In an estabhshed civil order this rela- 
tionship is enforced by agencies especially pro- 
vided for the purpose. These agencies, with the 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 113 

sentiment which enHvens them, and the custom 
and opinion which confirm them, signify good of 
a higher order than that of any individual or 
special interest; not because they are different 
in quality, but because they include all individual 
and special goods and make provision for them. 
In the state we all live and are strong, and if it 
fall, 

" O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down." 

Now let us suppose nation to be arrayed against 
nation. The use of force will be justified so far as 
it is necessary to establish a relation between 
nations that shall at least provide for their secu- 
rity. A nation which defends itself against ag- 
gression is both saving itself and also contending 
for the principle of nationality. It asks no more 
for itself than it concedes to its opponent — the 
privilege, namely, of existing and of administering 
its own internal affairs. Such a defensive war 
has then a double motive, the narrower motive 
of national security and the higher motive of 
general international security. 

Even the narrower of these motives is a moral 
motive for the individual. The state is for most 
men the highest good which comes at all within 



114 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the range of their experience. It is incomparably 
superior to the good with which in the daily round 
of work and play they are mainly preoccupied. 
It is often ignored, even by those persons of im- 
selfish purpose who oppose war because it threat- 
ens to interrupt the work of social betterment. 
Thus Mr. PhiHp Snowden, M.P., eloquently ex- 
horts us to "reahze that a beautiful school is a 
grander sight than a battleship — a, contented and 
prosperous peasantry than great battahons." ^ 
Nobody in his sober senses would deny it. But 
let Mr. Snowden and his friends on their part 
realize that his beautiful school and his prosperous 
peasantry exist by the grace of a state which 
owes its origin and its security to the vigilance 
and energy of men who have valued it enough to 
fight for it. 

The security of the state means the security 
of all the good things that exist within the state. 
We in America are fond of being let alone. The 
thought of war annoys us because life is so full of 
good things that we hate to be interrupted. But 
liberty and opportunity are the fruits of our na- 
tional existence, and if we love them we would do 
well to cherish that national existence in which 



^ From a speech delivered before the House of Commons on 
"Dreadnoughts and Dividends," on March i8, 19 14. 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 115 

they are rooted. Fighting men as a rule under- 
stand this better than peacemakers. The in- 
dividual understands it better on the field of 
battle than he does in the place where he earns 
his living or in the place where he goes when he 
is tired. It has become the custom to emphasize 
man's savagery, and behttle or suspect his sen- 
timents. We need to be reminded that the av- 
erage soldier thinks and feels more generously 
than the average civilian. We have come to 
speak of patriotism as though it meant mere self- 
assertion, and have forgotten that patriots are 
individuals who, while collectively they may be 
asserting themselves against the enemy, are in- 
dividually denying themselves for their country. 
And it is of this self-denying loyalty that they 
are most keenly conscious. "The peace ad- 
vocates," wrote Mr. E. L. Godkin in the days of 
Gravelotte and Orleans, "are constantly talking 
of the guilt of killing, while the combatants only 
think, and will only think, of the nobleness of 
dying." ^ 

It is only in national emergencies that the 
great majority of men realize that they enjoy 
the benefits of national existence. Then only is 

^From the article on "Peace" in his Reflections and Comments y 
p. 3- 



ii6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

it realized that civic life is the fundamental con- 
dition of individual life, and that all forms of 
economic and cultural activity are vitally de- 
pendent on it. The generation that has been 
born in this country since the Civil War has 
never had to make sacrifices for the state, and 
has never been brought to such a realization. 
We have taken too much for granted. Like 
spoiled children, we have assumed that the staple 
good of national security was provided by the 
bounty of nature, and have irritably clamored for 
the sweetmeats of wealth and higher education. 
I do not mean to suggest that any people should 
be satisfied with the minimum, but that we 
should clearly understand that human goods 
must follow in a certain order, and that the super- 
structure rests upon the foundation. 

But while the good of the state is greater than 
that of any individual or special interest, because 
it contains all of these and nourishes them, how 
shall it be measured against the good of that 
other state against which it is arrayed in war? 
How is it possible to justify patriotism when it 
makes war on patriotism? Is the state worth 
fighting for, when it means that there is another 
state which one is fighting against? Again we 
must apply our principle, that force is justifiable 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 117 

only when used in the interest of both parties, or 
in behalf of some higher form of association that 
is inclusive of both. A just defensive war must 
therefore be actuated by a higher principle even 
than that of patriotism. While it is waged pri- 
marily on behalf of the great common good of 
national existence, there must be at the same 
time a due acknowledgment of the enemy's equal 
right. The enemy on his part is deserving of 
forcible restraint only in so far as through his 
arrogance he prevents or threatens a relationship 
in which there is room for him as well. War 
upon such an enemy, like all righteous war, is 
war upon lawlessness. Although its first effect 
is destructive, it is provident and constructive 
in its ulterior effect. 

With this principle in mind we may now take 
a further step and justify offensive war, when 
undertaken in the interest of an international 
system or league of humanity. For a century or 
more this greater cause has stirred the imagina- 
tions of men, and it has gradually been adopted 
as a norm for the criticism of international policy. 
There is now no serious doubt in Hberal and earnest 
minds of the superiority of this cause to the nar- 
rower claims of nationality. How shall nations be 
so adjusted as to help and not hurt one another ? 



ii8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

How shall commerce and cultural intercourse be 
promoted, and dangerous friction and rivalry be 
removed? How shall the threat of war be so far 
reduced that nations can direct their energies and 
resources internally to the improvement of the lot 
of the unprivileged and disqualified majority? In 
theory the answer is as obvious as it is trite: by 
estabhshing among nations some greater unit of 
civic Hfe, some system of international law and 
equity, with agencies for its appKcation and en- 
forcement. 

But how shall we go forward to this end? 
Not by abandoning what has already been 
achieved, the integrity of the nation. For what we 
seek is something greater than nationahty, not 
something less. Not by sitting idly by and allow- 
ing events to roU over us. Not by awaiting the 
sudden appearance on earth of some heaven-sent 
umpire who shall box our ears and set us about 
our business. This much seems clear: that this 
end, if it is to be achieved at all, must be achieved 
by the greatest forces that man has now at his 
disposal. Nations and leagues of nations must 
assume the functions of international control. 
Their very strength, so terrible in destruction, 
must be directed to the larger end of construc- 
tion. Just as the order-loving individual had 
first to enact the law for himself and in his own 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 119 

behalf, so the more enHghtened and more liberal 
nations must take upon themselves the functions 
of international justice. One such nation, or an 
alliance of such nations, will be its first rude organ. 
Such an organ will necessarily be governed in part 
by the nearer motive of party interest, but this 
need not prevent the genuine existence of the 
higher motive as well. And just as the evolution 
of democracy means the gradual purification of 
the governmental motive, the purging of it from 
admixture with personal, dynastic and class in- 
terests, so we may expect to witness on the larger 
scale the gradual evolution of some similarly dis- 
interested agency that shall represent the good 
of all mankind. 

It is commonly and truly said that the present 
war is the most terrible in history. We have, 
I beheve, been too quick to see in this a reason 
for despair. Wars become terrible in proportion 
to the strength of the warring parties, in num- 
bers, organization and science. But what of this 
strength? Shall we count it no achievement? 
A war between Italy and Austria is more terrible 
than a war between Venice and Genoa, but only 
because Venice and Genoa have learned to live 
in peace and have achieved the strength of union 
and co-operation. We are witnessing to-day, not 
a mere war between nations, but the more awful 



I20 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

collision between alliances of nations. The horror 
of the catastrophe should not blind us to the 
fact that France and England, for example, have 
learned that each has more to gain from the oth- 
er's prosperity than from its decay, and that their 
differences are negligible when compared with 
their common interests. Together they possess 
strength of a higher order, terrible in war, but 
proportionally beneficent in peace. The evolution 
of human solidarity and organization has brought 
us to the stage of great international alliances. 

It is thus in keeping with the record of human 
progress that the last war should be the worst — 
and the worst the last. For the only human force 
more terrible than a league of some nations is 
the league of all nations, the league of man. The 
same motive that has led to the one will lead to 
the other — the desire, namely, to avoid the loss 
and weakness of conflict, and to attain the in- 
comparable advantages of co-operative life. This 
last aUiance wiU then have no human adversary 
left, but may devote its supreme power to perfect- 
ing the lot of the individual, and scotching the 
devil of reaction. 

The goods that are worth fighting for are first 
of all existent goods, embodied in the life of man. 



WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 121 

Such goods are created by physical forces, may 
be destroyed by physical forces, and may require 
to be defended by physical forces. They are 
worth fighting for when they are greater goods 
than those which have to be fought against. 
Civil law is worth fighting for, against the law- 
less individual. National integrity is worth fight- 
ing for, against disruptive factions or unscrupulous 
rivals. The general good of mankind is worth 
fighting for, against the narrower purpose of na- 
tional aggrandizement. These greater goods are 
worth fighting for; nothing is really worth fight- 
ing against. It therefore behooves every high- 
spirited individual or nation to be both strong 
and purposeful. Strength without high purpose 
is soulless and brutal; purpose without strength 
is unreal and impotent. 

We in America cannot, it is true, afford to 
build armies and navies from sheer bravado. 
Our strength must be consecrated to the best 
that the most enlightened reason and the most 
sensitive conscience can discern. But, on the 
other hand, we cannot afford to cherish any 
ideal whatsoever unless at the same time we are 
willing to put forth the effort that is commensurate 
with its realization. The corrective of militarism 
is not complacency and neglect, but a humane 



122 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

purpose; and the corrective of pacifism is not a 
lapse into barbarism, but the acquiring of suffi- 
cient might and resolution to do the work which 
a humane purpose requires. 



VII 

NON-RESISTANCE AND THE PRESENT 
WAR 

MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL, of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, is probably the most 
eminent of the small group of Englishmen who 
have openly advocated non-resistance as a pres- 
ent policy. His recent articles, published in this 
country, are admirable for their detachment and 
humanity; they might well serve as a model for 
the philosophical discussion of the great issues 
that are now hanging in the balance. And since 
non-resistance is not likely to find a more able 
protagonist than Mr. Russell, I have selected 
one of his articles, entitled "The Ethics of War,"^ 
as an instance by which to judge the merits of 
that principle. 

Although I disagree with almost every specific 
opinion which this article contains, let me first 
express my agreement with the general and un- 
derlying opinion that "the way of mercy is the 
way of happiness for all." This opinion is abun- 
dantly verified by human experience, past and 

^ International Journal of Ethics, January, 1915. 
123 



124 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

present, and is rapidly coming to be a common 
premise from which all philosophically minded 
persons argue. War in itself is an unmitigated 
calamity. It is not to be praised, but denounced; 
it is not even to be tolerated and idealized as a 
natural necessity, but is rather to be hunted to 
its sources and eradicated like a curable dis- 
order. Granting this, what is the reasonable 
attitude toward the present war and toward its 
principal actors? It is here that Mr. Russell 
seems to me to be mistaken in his facts and in 
his inferences. 

There is in this country and at least to some 
extent among the Allied Powers, a disposition 
to take international treaties and conventions 
seriously, and to condemn as "lawless" a nation 
that violates them. Mr. Russell regards this 
disposition as groundless because treaties are in 
{)ractise "only observed when it is convenient 
to do so." They lack the sanction which en- 
forces law, and serve only "to afford the sort of 
pretext which is considered respectable for en- 
gaging in war with another Power." Now I am 
willing to assume for the sake of the argument 
the doubtful thesis that nations do in practise 
imiversally disregard treaties at the dictation of 
selfish expediency. There remains the impor- 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 125 

tant fact, conceded by Mr. Russell, that such 
action is judged to be disreputable and "unscru- 
pulous." How is that judgment, which already 
impels governments to seek a "pretext," to be 
so strengthened as to act as a deterrent? 

The analogy of law, to which the pacifist ap- 
peals, would suggest a resort to force. But the en- 
forcement of international law predicates an inter- 
national organization resolved to substitute arbi- 
tration for war. How is such an international 
organization to be brought about? Only, it 
would appear, by the cultivation of opinion and 
habit. In short, before the present sentiment 
for the observance of international law shall be 
convertible into a sanction, it must be strengthened 
and attain to something like unanimity. To this 
end it is important that no breach of such con- 
ventions as are already in existence should be 
condoned. It is not by a passive admission of 
past and present lawlessness, but by a coimsel 
of perfection and a stern condemnation of the 
common fault, that usage is to be improved. 
A cynical violation of treaties should to-day be 
denounced with a severity exceeding any judg- 
ment in the past, so that to-morrow this thing 
may become so damnable that no government 
shall dare to be found guilty. 



126 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

' The disputes of private citizens are not com- 
monly settled, as Mr. Russell asserts, "by the 
force of the police," but by legal process resting 
on habit and intelligence. The police do not 
so much enforce law as prevent its occasional 
infraction. The great majority of persons, and 
all persons for the greater part of their lives, are 
"law-abiding."^ If international law is to be 
similarly sanctioned, its observance must like- 
wise rest on habit and intelligence. Nations 
must become generally law-abiding, before 
any international police can imdertake to con- 
strain law-breaking nations. "If the facts were 
understood," says Mr. Russell, "wars amongst 
civilized nations would cease, owing to their 
inherent absurdity." How is such a general 
understanding to be brought about, and how 
is the reasonable practise to become the normal 
practise? Only, it seems to me, by an unflag- 
ging effort to promote every instrument, such as 
international law, treaties, courts of arbitration, 

* Mr. Russell, on the other hand, evidently agrees with the view 
of Mr. Strachey as quoted by Mr. Graham Wallas: "Why do men 
have recourse to a Court of Law in private quarrels . . . ? Be- 
cause they are forced to do so and are allowed to use no other ar- 
bitrament." To this Mr. Wallas replies: "But, as a matter of 
historical fact, the irresistible force by which men are now com- 
pelled to resort to the law-courts in their private quarrels is the 
result of custom arising from thousands of free decisions to do so." 
— The Great Society, p. 169. 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 127 

that provides a substitute for the absurdity of 
war, and by the emphatic and unambiguous 
censure of every act that destroys these instru- 
mentalities or renders them ineffective. 

To many minds it doubtless seems paradoxical 
to war for the sake of peace. It is precisely as 
paradoxical, no more and no less, as it is to labor 
for the sake of rest, or to make sacrifices in order 
that one may live more abundantly. Indeed I 
am inclined to go so far as to say that the one 
cause for which one may properly make war is 
the cause of peace. To be willing to fight for a 
thing simply means to be unwilling to give it 
up, however seriously it may be threatened. 
The one thing that is certainly worth the price 
of war is peace. This is simply because war 
means the destruction, and peace the security, 
of all human values. 

The only justification of destruction is the hope 
of safety and preservation. This holds, whatever 
be one's values, provided only that they be human 
and earthly values. There is only one philosophy 
of non-resistance that can be justified, and that is 
other-worldliness. If no value attaches to the 
things of this world, then there is no motive for 
resistance; although in that case it is equally in- 
different whether one resists or not, since the 



128 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

enemy^s life is worth no more than one's own. 
The moment any human achievement of body, 
mind or character is taken to be good, then war 
for its preservation is in principle justified. Even 
though humility be the supreme good, then one 
should resist the aggression of an enemy who 
threatens to destroy one's life before one has 
cultivated that virtue, or proposes after the ex- 
termination of the humble to spread a propaganda 
of pride. 

But Mr. Russell bases his claims for non-re- 
sistance on no such philosophy of remmciation. 
It is evident that he holds life, happiness, intel- 
lectual contemplation, self-government, and many 
other things to be good. He suggests nothing 
better worth struggling for than these characteris- 
tic benefits of the secular civilized life. He would 
propose to secure these things by peaceful means, 
but he must, of course, add, "if possible.'' What, 
then, if some enemy determines to destroy these 
things, and begins to destroy them? Suppose 
that enemy to be prompted by the motive of 
destruction. There are then only two alterna- 
tives: To yield, with the expectation that these 
good things will be destroyed, or to resist in the 
hope that they may be preserved, albeit at great 
cost and in diminished measure. In the former 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 129 

case one's action cannot be justified at all be- 
cause one can expect no good from it. One can- 
not even hope to avoid evil, because it may be 
the determination of the enemy to perpetrate 
that which one holds to be evil. The latter course 
is then the only course that will be dictated by 
love of good. 

To try out this principle of non-resistance one 
must imagine the greatest conceivable good to 
be attacked with a deliberate intent to destroy 
it; or the greatest conceivable evil to be threat- 
ened with a deliberate and implacable intent 
to perpetrate it. One must suppose the suc- 
cess of the enemy to be probable if he is 
not resisted, and doubtful or capable of being 
retarded, if he is resisted. To test the principle 
rigorously one should conceive the good or evil 
at stake in such terms as to arouse one's deepest 
sentiments. It is life, or character, or social 
welfare, or the souFs salvation that is attacked; 
it is tyranny, or rape, or child-murder, or hell- 
fire that is threatened. What, then, shall one 
do? To yield, not to resist to the utmost, is to 
abandon the best or permit the worst. There is 
by definition no higher ground, either the pro- 
motion of good or the avoidance of evil, on which 
such a course may be justified. It is true that in 



I30 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

any given case one's judgment may be in error. 
But this proves only that one should be sure 
that one's fears are well grounded, that it is a 
genuine good or evil that is at stake, and that 
one's enemy is really one's enemy. This argues 
for the need of light. But it does not in the least 
argue against the principle of defensive warfare. 
So much for the principle. Let us consider 
the author's applications. "The Duchy of Luxem- 
burg, which was not in a position to offer resis- 
tance, has escaped the fate of the other regions 
occupied by hostile troops."^ I am willing to 
waive the doubtful considerations of "honor" 
and "prestige," and stake the argument alto- 
gether on other considerations. First, Luxem- 
burg through non-resistance has decreased the 
respect for the independence of small nations in 
general, and for her own independence in partic- 
ular. Secondly, though she may have escaped 
the fate of the other regions occupied by hostile 

^Op. cit., p. 139. Mr. Russell does not present evidence that 
this is the case. The New York Times for February 23, 1915, pub- 
lished the following extract from a letter written from Luxemburg: 
"I do not believe that the Belgians can hate the Germans as strongly 
as the people of this little duchy. Their coimtry is not laid low by 
cannon-fire, neither were they butchered by the Germans, and yet 
they are not better off than the inhabitants of Belgium. Every 
able-bodied citizen is being compelled to serve the German army 
in one or other form. . . . The laboring classes have lost their 
occupations, while the well-to-do cannot point to anything and 
say, 'This is mine.' " 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 131 

troops thus favy it is as well to remember that the 
war is not yet over. If the tide turns, the in- 
habitants of this duchy may yet be visited with 
all the horrors of war, with no friend on either 
side, and incapable of protecting themselves. 
Thirdly, if Germany wins, Luxemburg becomes, 
as she is virtually now, a German dependency. 
If Germany loses, Luxemburg has small claim 
for the recognition of her sovereignty even from 
those who are in this war the champions of the 
smaller states, on the principle that those de- 
serve political autonomy who care enough for 
it to defend it. Finally, Luxemburg does not 
in any case offer an analogy from which to argue 
for the non-resistance of Belgium or England, 
because she "was not in a position to offer re- 
sistance," and therefore was under no such 
recognized obligation to defend her neutrality 
as was the case of Belgium. 

But Mr. Russell is evidently willing to con- 
template, as preferable to warlike resistance, 
even loss of political independence. He evidently 
believes that what is valuable in national life 
may be preserved even though one put oneself 
utterly at the disposal of the enemy. Here again 
I prefer to waive the more doubtful matters. 
Whether humiliating submission to alien arro- 



132 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

gance, accompanied by a vivid memory of lost 
freedom, would be a tolerable form of existence, 
I will not attempt to argue — I should fear that I 
might lapse into an expression of feeling. Most 
men would, I think, prefer to die; and they would 
be entitled to the choice. But Mr. Russell pro- 
poses somehow to combine with non-resistance 
'^English civilization, the English language, Eng- 
lish manufactures," and EngHsh constitutionalism 
or democracy; all this, though the Enghsh navy 
were sunk and London occupied by the Prussians ! 
Now what can Mr. Russell mean? He knows 
better than I that not only manufactures, but 
bare existence in England depends on commerce. 
They depend not only on the actual freedom of 
the sea, but on the guarantee of that freedom. 
He knows that if the Prussians occupied London 
and it suited their purpose they could undertake 
the suppression of the English language as they 
have undertaken the suppression of the Polish 
language. He knows that, should the German 
monarchy fear the effect of the example of Eng- 
lish democracy, it would have a strong motive 
for emulating the policy of the "Holy Alliance" 
of 1815. Having the motive, there is on the 
principle of non-resistance not the least reason 
why Germany should not accomplish these things. 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 133 

Mr. Russell thinks that England may neverthe- 
less be saved from oppression by "public opinion 
in Germany," which is somehow suddenly to be 
inspired with magnanimity by the spectacle of 
the voluntary submission of its rival. Germany's 
treatment of a non-resistant China would afford 
small encouragement for this desperate hope, 
even were it not a general fact that arrogance 
is only inflated and encouraged by submission. 
History aboimds in examples of this. One need 
only cite the habitual insolence of the European 
races toward non-resistant or obsequious Jews. 

The last remaining vestige of hope would then 
be based on Mr. Russell's contention that Eng- 
land herself has not found it possible to refuse 
self-government to her colonies. But England 
has found it necessary or politic to concede self- 
government to her colonies because they were 
English colonies, composed of high-spirited men 
of English blood who could be counted upon 
sooner or later to assert their independence, and 
to make it respected if necessary by force. Eng- 
land has not found it necessary to grant self- 
government to conquered races. An England 
occupied by Prussians would not be a colony, 
but a conquered race. And by the express terms 
of a philosophy of non-resistance such an England 



134 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

would have lost its high spirit, and would have 
renounced forever any ultimate appeal to force. 
Like the American neutral, Mr. Russell holds 
"that no single one of the combatants is justified 
in the present war." What he means is not 
perfectly clear. That no nation whatsoever has 
clean hands and an unblemished record is doubt- 
less true. But at least two of the warring nations, 
Servia and Belgium, were wantonly attacked. 
It is now generally admitted that Austria's ulti- 
matum to Servia was intended to provoke war 
in order that Servia might be "chastised." Bel- 
gium was deliberately sacrificed to Germany's 
mihtary convenience. So far as these nations 
are concerned, there was no alternative to war 
save non-resistance. Both of these nations be- 
long to the side of the Allies. The other allied 
nations were at least in part moved by a desire 
to save these two smaller nations from subjec- 
tion. They may be said, therefore, to be fighting 
for the principle of national security, and for the 
principle of adjudicating international disputes 
by conference, agreement and treaty. They were 
or are now doubtless actuated by other and 
less commendable motives. But that does not 
in the least annul their justification on the first 
ground. For a man may rightly save a weak 
neighbor from assault, even though the assailant 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 135 

be one's private enemy, and even though his 
punishment afford one private satisfaction or 
advantage. 

Even were one to grant that Russia and France 
should have permitted the subjection of Servia 
by Austria, and that England should have per- 
mitted the subjection of Belgium by Germany, 
there remains an independent and much less 
debatable question. Which of the warring parties 
is most deserving of censure, and whose victory 
is more desirable ? In other words, whom should 
one's moral judgment most severely condemn, 
and what outcome would be most conducive 
to the general good? This is a question which 
no lover of mankind, however detached and dis- 
passionate, can ignore. The present war is an 
event of prodigious human significance, and its 
consequences will be lasting and far-reaching. 
If there be any just decision or verdict in these 
matters, it is important to reach it, lest one lapse 
into helpless and confused passivity, and play 
no part now that the hour of trial has come. 
There is a wide-spread conviction among those 
who have observed the war at some distance 
from the heat of action that Germany and Aus- 
tria are chiefly culpable and that their defeat is 
desirable. It seems probable, more from what 
Mr. Russell has omitted to say than from what 



136 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

he has said, that he does not share that convic- 
tion. His independence and honesty of opinion 
are to be respected. But I believe his opinion 
to be mistaken. 

Mr. Russell himself acknowledges that "democ- 
racy in the western nations would suffer from the 
victory of Germany." He protests, however, that 
democracy can never be "imposed" on Germany; 
overlooking the fact that a decline of Prussian 
mihtary prestige would not only remove a threat 
that seriously retards the natural growth of 
democracy in England and France, but might 
put new heart into the millions of German Social- 
Democrats who (contrary to Mr. Russell^s as- 
sertion) do not enjoy "the form of government 
which they desire." 

Nothing that has developed during the last 
year of the war, and nothing that Mr. Russell has 
said, has tended to disprove the verdict that 
Germany and Austria are the pruicipal offenders 
on whom may justly be visited whatever penalty 
be appropriate to the crime of war. The para- 
moimt fact is that one of these Powers, abetted 
by the other, first made war. Germany, at least 
thus far, has practised war least humanely, has 
done least to mitigate its horrors, and has shown 
least respect for the conventions which have been 



NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 137 

intended to regulate and limit war. The domi- 
nant party in Germany, the Prussian military 
caste, most perfectly embodies the aggrandizing 
and arrogant spirit of aggressive war, and con- 
stitutes the greatest obstacle in the way of the 
achievement of future and perpetual peace. 

If these judgments be well founded it is essential 
that they should be made and that they should 
not readily be forgotten. They may only too 
easily be confused by an overscrupulous regard 
for the guilt of the less guilty. There is a curious 
inversion of emphasis in Mr. Russell's article. 
It is not impossible that a distrust of vulgar 
opinion should lead a nicely analytical and cau- 
tiously reflective mind to exaggerate whatever 
is contrary to the general prejudice. It may 
even lead one to dwell at length upon the im- 
moderate indignation of the victim, while the 
fury of the assailant rages unrebuked. It is 
doubtless the principal task of the philosopher 
to offset the bias of the multitude and resist the 
current that sweeps by him. But it sometimes 
happens that the common opinion is correct, 
and that even such blind passions as patriotism 
and righteous indignation will be found working 
for the general good. 



VIII 

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 

AT a time like the present there is no maxim 
^ in the whole store of moral truisms that is 
not apt. For war appears to be nothing less 
than a demoraHzing of man, a fit of madness in 
which riotously, even exultingly, he throws away 
all the advantage he has laboriously won against 
the inertia and drag of nature. As though seized 
with a sort of morbid exhibitionism, he denudes 
himself of the garment of civilization and shame- 
lessly exposes what he once thought bestial and 
degraded. Deceiving himself by narrow and per- 
verted loyalties, and confirmed by the unison of 
collective passion, he launches himseK upon a 
course of violence, deceit, robbery, arson, murder, 
profligacy, cruelty, lawlessness and impiety — so 
that war seems scarcely other than a name for 
the aggregate of all wicked things. 

This is incontestable. But save as a purge for 
the writer himself there is Httle virtue in saying 
it, because it needs so Httle arguing, and because, 

138 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE ? 139 

as with most sermonizing, the sinners are not in 
church. The cure of the present war is not to be 
effected by gentle remonstrance. Then why all 
this talk ? Why does every man burn to say some- 
thing, if only to his neighbor over the back fence? 
It is because we have reflected that what has 
happened once may happen again, and that the 
horrid menace of war must be taken to heart. 
Mankind is liable and even predisposed to con- 
tract the disease and perish of it. We are rightly 
stirred to seek measures of prevention; not for 
our own selves merely, but because civilization 
itself is worth so little while it is threatened with 
sudden and ruinous depreciation. If any cause of 
war can be unmistakably identified and labelled 
"Danger!'' then something, be it ever so Httle, 
has been contributed to the safety of mankind. 
To know a cause prepares the way for its con- 
trol, and to control the cause is to control the 
effect. 

But first of all it is necessary to beHeve and to 
believe resolutely and unyieldingly that war has 
causes which may be identified and controlled. 
To doubt this is as though medical science should 
disbelieve in the possibility of curing disease. 
Whoever says that the present war or any war 
is inevitable, should be rebuked as the unwitting 



I40 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

accomplice of the powers of darkness. For in 
weakening the intent and power to control the 
disaster he is helping, to bring it about. He who 
regards any event as inevitable is himself one of 
its causes. This is the obvious but neglected 
truth that I want here to proclaim. War does 
not happen to mankind, but is committed hy man- 
kind. It is as much within his control as are any 
of his works, and to fall away from this beHef into 
a weak and hopeless acquiescence, is to lose that 
high purpose from which all great human achieve- 
ments must spring. 

By a curious perversion of an obscure half- 
truth common sense has come to regard the 
psychological, or the "merely" psychological, as 
unreal. Christian Science relies upon this vulgar 
prejudice to convince people that to identify 
disease with error is the same as to deny it alto- 
gether. The worldly wise have had a good deal 
of fun over President Wilson's declaration that 
the ante-bellum business depression was largely 
psychological. Assuming that this was the same 
as to say that there wasn't any business depres- 
sion, the rustic or curbstone wit had only to 
point to some recent failure, and loutish laughter 
rang loud at poor Mr. Wilson's expense. So one 
hesitates to say that war is largely psychological, 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 141 

lest some keen observer point to the record of 
death and destruction, and ask triumphantly: 
"Are these, too, psychological ? " 

And yet it is instantly evident that everything 
whatsoever with which man has to do is in so 
far a matter of human nature, that is to say, of 
psychology. I am assuming that we are talking 
not of events like the return of a comet, but of 
events like wars in which human agency is in- 
volved. Wars are due not to the operation of 
mechanical laws of the astronomical sort, but to 
the passions, purposes, decisions and volitions 
of men. They are due, in short, to the human 
mind, as this operates individually and collec- 
tively. 

That there are enormous differences in the 
causal power exerted by different minds, de- 
pending on their place of vantage in the social 
system, is, of course, true. Most men merely 
echo the prevaiHng opinion or swell the general 
tide of passion. Even so, such men in the aggre- 
gate give to opinion its tendency to prevail, and 
to passion its tidal and overwhelming power. 
But the contribution of a single member of the 
mass is not comparable with that of an individual 
who occupies a place of prominence or authority. 
Such a mind operates at a source, coloring all that 



142 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

springs from it, or at a crucial point where every 
sKght deflection is enormously magnified in the 
consequence. From such minds come the models 
of opinion, the first breaks in the self-control that 
dams the flood of passion, or the decisions and 
acts which suddenly create new situations and 
upset the dehcate equilibrium of peace. The 
causes of any war are far too complex for exhaus- 
tive analysis. The historians have not yet satis- 
factorily explained the first war, and we shall 
not five to see the explanation of this last. But 
so much is certain, that wars are due to the 
forces which animate and govern the human 
mind. 

Now to return to our truism, that to expect 
war is to be a contributory cause of it. To ex- 
pect a thing is in a way to dispose one's mind to 
it; and if it be the sort of thing, like war, that is 
a product of the mind, it will therefore be affected 
— ^if not directly and considerably, then at least 
indirectly and slightly. Only be it remembered 
that causes that severally are slight may cumu- 
latively be decisive. To expect a thing is usually 
to relax or abandon efforts to prevent it. The 
expectation of failure weakens the effort to suc- 
ceed, and in so far makes way for failure. Simi- 
larly, to expect a war incHnes one to be half- 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 143 

hearted or to lose heart altogether in one's efforts 
to keep the peace. 

In the case of war a peculiar social phenomenon 
aggravates this negative effect of unbelief, and 
exerts a positive influence as well. To disbelieve 
in the friendly intentions of another, to regard 
him as an enemy, is to encourage in him what- 
ever incipient hostility his breast may harbor. 
The hostility thus evoked will seem to justify 
the very suspicion that evoked it. This suspicion, 
in turn, now renewed and intensified, will react 
again upon its object until, passion thus feeding 
on itself, what was at the outset only a passing 
attitude of faint distrust has become a violent 
and deep-rooted hate. Every one has witnessed 
this phenomenon in spitting cats and growling 
dogs, or in the growth of his own personal en- 
mities. To understand the part such causes 
play in war one has only to multiply these familiar 
effects by the factors of contagion and social in- 
tensification. 

But expectation involves more than lapse of 
prevention. Ordinarily it involves something 
more positive still, that we call "preparation for 
the inevitable." And to prepare for a thing in 
that spirit is, of course, to faciHtate it. If you are 
resigned to an event, then you have created con- 



144 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

ditions favorable to its occurrence. To be ready 
for war means that any new event tending to war 
will find other necessary factors already present, 
so that what is in itself a cause of slight weight 
may be a last straw. The materials, the organi- 
zation, the pohcies, even the explanations and 
apologies are at hand. The normal inhibitions 
against violence are largely removed. To be 
ready for war is to be, as we say, "used to the 
idea.'* There are a thousand ways in which prep- 
aration for war, itself the consequence of expect- 
ing it, may in turn literally pave the way for it, 
or pass over by almost insensible gradations into 
the act of war itself. 

The question of preparedness is thus, like most 
questions of policy, less simple than immediately 
appears. Since war may always be forced by the 
threat of something worse, prudence and a decent 
sense of responsibility compel even a peace-loving 
nation like the United States to be prepared for 
that emergency. Furthermore, there are times 
and circumstances like the present, in which war 
is a very live possibility. It may be a war of de- 
fense; it may be a war on war-makers in the 
interest of peace. It is necessary, then, to pre- 
pare for the contingency of war, without regard- 
ing it as inevitable. Lest even this readiness 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE ? 145 

should dispose the mind to accept war as a 
fatahty, it is necessary at the same time to labor 
eagerly and hopefully for peace. There is a vast 
difference between being resigned to failure and 
being prepared for failure, and the difference is 
made by the determination to succeed. It is pos- 
sible to prepare for war without being resigned 
to it, provided one struggles with conviction to 
achieve an honorable peace. 

So much for our generalizations. Let us fit 
the cap. Many who have recently undertaken 
publicly to justify Germany have betrayed on 
their own part, and have attributed to Germany 
herself, a belief that the present war was inevitable. 
There is one infallible sign of fatalism. Believing 
as they do that an event is inevitable and that 
individuals like themselves are both impotent to 
prevent it and free from responsibility for it, all 
fatalists attribute the event to extra-individual 
causes, to abstractions and fictions which they 
suppose to operate somehow, despite individuals. 

Most of us can remember that it was not we 
ourselves, but "destiny" that annexed the Philip- 
pine Islands. We now find the minds of German 
apologists confused with a like superstition. 
Avoiding the history of the crucial decisions and 
actions of individuals, like Count Berchtold and 



146 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

Emperor William, they tell us that the war is 
due to the "racial ambition'' of the Slav, to the 
French sentiment of "revanche," and to British 
"commercial jealousy." Owing to the operation 
of these forces the war was "boimd to come"; 
these were its great "imderlying causes." 

Now, is this cant or only pedantry? Is it 
mere talk by which to mask ambition, or is it a 
sincere wrong-headed abstractionism tinged with 
sentimentality? Perhaps it is both. When the 
motives of a nation are in question it is safer to 
adopt the more complex rather than the simpler 
theory. In any case the causes invoked, taken 
as impersonal forces, are sheer nonentities; they 
cannot cause war for the simple reason that ex- 
cept as particular motives in concrete individuals 
they do not cause at all. 

There are Slavs, no doubt, who cherish dreams 
of racial unity and aggrandizement, as there are 
Servian and Russian politicians who contrive 
ways of realizing such dreams. But these are 
individuals governed by countless other motives 
as well, limited by opportunity, liable to change, 
and in some measure open to reason. There are 
vindictive Frenchmen and jealous Englishmen, 
no doubt; but the individual minds that harbor 
these passions are moved also by other impulses, 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 147 

and are capable, judging by the history of the last 
decade, of controlling their passions. 

Granting that, it is impossible to deny that 
these passions might subside and disappear al- 
together. If a war can be postponed a day or an 
hour, no man can deny the possibility of prevent- 
ing it altogether. Woe to the man who takes the 
last irretrievable step that cuts off that possibility 
forever. For he has committed the act of war; 
aided and abetted by all who have confused his 
mind and blinded him to his crucial and decisive 
responsibility. To single out some one sentiment 
from the rest, to abstract it from the individual 
minds that entertain it and from the circum- 
stances that limit and change it, to invest it with 
a power to operate in vacuo and with superhuman 
power like an evil spirit, is both a silly supersti- 
tion and, in the practical aspect, a culpable 
abandonment of moral effort. 

Apparently the "if there be war'' was to the 
German authorities so vivid a possibility, so 
overwhelming a probability, that they were un- 
willing to risk any military advantage whatso- 
ever in the interest of a thing so chimerical as 
peace. If Germany had been willing to lose the 
advantage of swifter mobilization by postponing 
the outbreak of war until Russia was mobilized, 



148 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

there is every reason to believe that the war 
would not have broken out at all. It is fairly 
evident that you cannot keep the peace by in- 
sisting upon an arrangement such that you would 
enjoy every initial advantage if there should be 
war. There results a manoeuvring for position 
that is already a beginning of war. It is true' 
that every nation is in a measure guilty. For 
years Europe has been so zealously engaged in 
a hypothetical war as to make the transition to 
real war an easy and natural one. But it can 
scarcely be denied that efforts to reduce arma- 
ments and estabHsh peace upon a permanent 
basis have met with least encouragement in Ger- 
many, and this owing not so much to German 
militarism as to German scepticism. 

The German loves peace, but doesn't believe 
in it; he hates war, but resigns himself to it as 
inevitable. The Yellow Peril or the Slav Peril 
is forcing it upon him, and thrusting the sword 
into his reluctant hands. With admirable resolu- 
tion and skill he makes ready to meet these 
fantastic perils, and lo, by his very readiness he 
has made them for the first time real. He has 
himself brought the Japanese to Kiaochow and 
the Russian to Konigsberg. 

If German explanations of the war have con- 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 149 

firmed and aggravated the prejudice they were 
designed to correct, it is because they fail to go 
to the individual centres of human responsibility. 
It is natural for Englishmen or Americans to 
want to know who made the war, not what made 
it. And this is not a mere habit of mind; it is 
good history and sound psychology. In order to 
cause events, the passions which move men and 
societies must find expression in action. Before 
they can do this they must undergo selection and 
limitation, through their reciprocal interplay, 
and through the various checks of habit, author- 
ity and reason. Eventually passion may pass 
over into volition and overt action. But it is 
during this transition from tendencies and poten- 
tialities to particular acts of particular individuals 
that they are subject to control. The tendencies 
and potentialities themselves, such as race hatred 
or land hunger, are indeterminate as to their 
effects. They may result in this or that, accord- 
ing to the turn they are given at the crisis of 
action. The full absurdity of invoking them as 
causes of war can be understood only when one 
reflects that there always exist such causes of 
war between aU the peoples of the earth. They 
are among the constant forces which human 
policy must take account of, but they are not the 



I50 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

differential causes which actualize specific events, 
nor the instrumental causes with which these 
are controlled. 

We do not explain the sinking of the Titanic 
by the law of gravitation. Ships do tend toward 
the bottom of the sea, as men tend to lie prone 
upon the earth; nevertheless many ships float and 
men do for a time stand erect and even rise into 
the air. In other words, there are other forces 
besides gravitation, and the physical history of 
man is due to the balance and regulation of these 
forces. There is jealousy, bitterness and sus- 
picion enough between some Americans and 
some Japanese to provide abundant "underl3dng 
causes" for the outbreak of war. And should 
such a disaster be visited upon us no doubt these 
and other more remote generalizations would be 
invoked in order to obscure and excuse individual 
responsibihty. But it will in fact be as unneces- 
sary to-morrow as to-day, unless it be for the 
wanton recklessness, selfishness or stupidity of 
some individual who at a particular crisis allows 
these sentiments to break forth into hostile 
deeds. There are underlying causes for a brawl 
between every man and his neighbor, inasmuch 
as there are in every human heart impulses of 
self-aggrandizement and anger that would, if 



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? 151 

conditions were favorable and checks removed, 
drive each man at his neighbor's throat. But 
when such deeds of lawlessness occur we do not 
ascribe them to these impulses, but to the de- 
fects of will and reason by which they were let 
loose. 

Human nature is warlike. True, but not con- 
clusive. The Eskimos of Greenland and the 
African Pigmies, for example, are not at war. 
Then we must add that human nature, condi- 
tions being favorable, is also peaceful. And if 
we admit this, we must conclude that since man 
is capable of either, whether he be at war or at 
peace, is going to be determined not by these 
deeper and more constant capacities, but by the 
conditions that stimulate, evoke and facilitate 
them. These conditions may be controlled so 
that the peaceful possibilities are reahzed, and the 
warlike possibilities held in check or transmuted 
into their opposite. In this fact lies the hope of 
civilization. 



IX 

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 

THE recent course of events has forced to the 
front an old and crucial issue. The need 
for economic and military preparedness, for a 
more vivid national consciousness, and for some 
comprehensive and synthetic treatment of acute 
social maladies, have steadily inclined opinion 
toward centraUzation and institutional control. 
But this trend appears to threaten that individual 
latitude and diversity which is the most cherished 
tradition among English and French speaking 
peoples. It behooves us, then, to seek for the tap- 
root of that individualism which we prize, in 
order to know on what its life and nourishment 
depend. 

It has often been observed that what imperils 
individualism in these United States of America 
in this twentieth century is not institutional 
tyranny, but the imconscious and insidious 
tyranny which is exercised by the unorganized 
social mass. Here is a tyranny that is not only 

powerful, but capricious. It has not even the 

152 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 153 

merit of consistency. And the individualism 
which it suppresses is the essential individualism. 
Institutional authority, however tyrannical, may 
at least be credited with suppressing that lawless 
self-seeking which borrows the honorable name 
of liberty, but which is in fact its most ancient 
enemy. The mass influence, on the other hand, 
is a menace to that self-possession, that capacity 
for private judgment which is the soul of all 
disciplined and constructive liberty. 

Since tyranny of this sort is not imposed by in- 
stitutional authority, it is futile to resist it merely 
by political means. It is not to be met directly 
either by curtailing the functions of the state or 
by enlarging the political activities of the indi- 
vidual. For it is primarily a question of how much 
thinking an individual is going to do for himself. 
The more a man thinks, the less is he imitative and 
suggestible. The problem, then, is to promote the 
practise of thinking. The problem is to be solved, 
if at all, by educational agencies, and these agen- 
cies must be directed to the end of cultivating the- 
oretical capacity, or the gift of knowledge. For 
to create a knower is to create an individual who 
may, notwithstanding the pressure of the social 
mass, remain an individual. 

This platitude becomes less insufferable when 



154 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

one emphasizes the difference between knowledge 
and opinion, which everybody admits and which 
everybody ignores. That common sense is care- 
less about this difference is proved by the fact 
that the term "knowledge" is perpetually em- 
ployed where the terms "opinion," "information" 
or "beHef" would be more correct. For most 
of us the first lesson in knowledge proper is ge- 
ometry. We may remember, for example, the 
theorem that the sum of the interior angles of a 
triangle is equal to two right angles. We have 
all forgotten how the proof nms; but we can, 
perhaps, recover what happened to our minds 
in the course of it. When we came to the theorem 
we knew what we were going to prove. One 
might say carelessly that we already "knew" 
that the interior angles of a triangle were equal 
to two right angles. But that would be to over- 
look the immensely important difference between 
the state of mind before and after the under- 
standing of the proof. 

Before the proof we believed the proposition as 
hard as we did afterward. Our opinion was not 
changed. Nor did we get any new information. 
A surveyor who wished simply to use geometry, 
would have been as well off before. There are 
handy manuals of geometry for surveyors or navi- 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 155 

gators which contain only the theorems themselves 
without the proofs. But if we had simply learned 
from such a manual we would have failed alto- 
gether to experience just that flash of insight, 
that moment of illumination, when the proof is 
complete and one feels a comfortable glow in 
one's rational parts. I do not believe that there 
was ever a mind so benighted as not to expe- 
rience a tiny bit of pleasure at just that moment 
when it can say: "I see!" If one were a cock 
this would be the time to crow. But whether it 
be joyous or not, this is the moment of knowl- 
edge. 

In other words, to know, one must know why, 
or on what grounds. For every proposition that 
is true there is somewhere a "because,'' the evi- 
dence that proves it. To assert the proposition 
in the light of the evidence for it, is to know. The 
evidence is not always, or even usually, of the 
geometrical sort. The proof of a pudding, for 
example, is in the eating. I am not insisting that 
everything must be argued or reasoned about in 
order to be proved, but only that for every as- 
sertion that is true there is some kind of a proof, 
and that one does not "know" the assertion un- 
less one's mind takes in the proof as well. 

Now it is evident that if knowledge is to be 



156 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

defined in this very exacting way, then there 
cannot be nearly so much of it in the world as 
is ordinarily supposed. If everybody were for- 
bidden to say anything that he couldn't prove, 
a sudden hush would fall upon the world, and 
such events, for example, as an afternoon tea, 
or a debate in Congress, or the present essay would 
have to be stricken off the program altogether! 
If no one were allowed to use or act on any proposi- 
tions that he couldn't prove, most of the business 
of life would have to be stopped, and very few 
things indeed would get done. No, I do not rec- 
ommend that opinion, belief and information be 
abjured altogether, and that knowledge be put in 
their place. But, on the other hand, it does seem 
fairly apparent that somewhere, once in a while, 
there should be somebody that knows. Other- 
wise one does not see any way in which opinion, 
belief and information could be tested for truth, 
and have their trustworthiness guaranteed. 

Theoretical capacity, then, means first of all 
the capacity to make truth, to reach sound con- 
clusions, and to distinguish between well-groimded 
and ungrounded assertions. But it involves, 
furthermore, some comprehension of the limits 
of knowledge. The common failure to under- 
stand the limits of practical knowledge is a case 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 157 

in point. If I know that by combining with 
another man, B, I may crush out a third com- 
petitor, C, monopolize an industry, raise prices, 
and win a fortune, my knowledge may be well- 
grounded, based upon the incontestable evidence 
of experience. But there is also much that I do 
not know; for example, what effect such practises 
may have upon the industrial world at large, and 
what effect this effect in turn may have upon the 
health of the body politic or upon the general 
welfare of men. I do not even know what effect 
the winning of the fortune may have upon my 
own personal happiness, or the saving of my 
soul. If I act on the narrower knowledge as 
though it were all-comprehensive, I am guilty 
of the sort of ignorance which consists in ignoring 
how little, after all, I do know; and my practical 
wisdom may, because of its very cock-sureness or 
sense of certainty, turn out to be the most egre- 
gious folly. Or if, having learned a little science, 
say, for example, the theory of electrons, I straight- 
way proceeded as though I lived in a world con- 
stituted wholly of electrons, and remained ig- 
norant of moral or religious truths, I should be 
so lacking in sense of proportion as to imperil all 
my deeper interests. This is what is meant when 
it is said that "a little knowledge is a dangerous 



158 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

thing." A little knowledge is dangerous when 
it is mistaken for much. 

It is important, then, to have the unknown 
charted on the map as well as the known. And 
it is scarcely less important to know the difference 
between certain knowledge and probable knowl- 
edge. It appears that the certainty of knowledge 
is in inverse proportion to its importance. Every 
one would agree, I think, that the biggest ques- 
tions are those of politics and of religion. And 
yet here it is impossible to reach any conclusion 
at all comparable in certainty with the knowl- 
edge that "this book is on this table." Therefore 
we should learn so far as possible to regard pre- 
vailing opinions in the larger and more complex 
matters as subject to correction. If we do not, 
we simply cut ourselves off from the possibility of 
increased light where we are most in need of it. 

Theoretical capacity is sustained, furthermore, 
by that primitive instinct of curiosity through 
which the pursuit of knowledge may be made to 
bring satisfaction of itself. It is an instinct which 
requires to be kept alive or reawakened, rather 
than an artificial interest which requires to be 
cultivated. There is no one who has not once 
felt this curiosity as a powerful impelling force. 
It is a matter of common observation and regret 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 159 

that the sophisticated youth often shows less 
eagerness of mind, less of that wondering, specula- 
tive impulse, than a small boy of seven. *^No 
sceptical philosopher," says Mr. Chesterton, "can 
ask any questions that may not equally be asked 
by a tired child on a hot afternoon. 'Am I a 
boy ? Why am I a boy ? Why aren't I a chair ? 
What is a chair?' A child will sometimes ask 
questions of this sort for two hours. And the 
philosophers of Protestant Europe have asked 
them for two hundred years.'' One who has met 
with this sort of child will be surprised that Mr. 
Chesterton should speak of the child as "tired." 
Alas! it is the poor adult that is tired — ^perhaps 
I should say bored, or at best patiently indul- 
gent, because he has lost the hot interest, the ad- 
venturous zeal from which these interrogations 
spring. It isn't so much that the adult has 
grown wiser, as that he has grown busier, and is 
more dominated by habits, more broken to the 
harness. He is already in the rut of practical 
routine, and is annoyed at anything that sug- 
gests his ignorance and limitations. 

Theoretical capacity, then, betokens the mind 
which is emancipated from imitative or dogmatic 
belief by a close regard for evidence and proof, 
and which is emancipated from the narrowing 



i6o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

routine of "affairs" by that intellectual spon- 
taneity with which every naive mind is en- 
dowed. The quickened mind will complete its 
own emancipation. Thought loves generality and 
knows no bounds. It fixes upon the laws that 
abide, and neglects the local and the perishable. 
Its auxiliary and complement is the creative 
imagination — the one miracle that even science 
cannot deny, by which the mind may not only 
overcome time and space, but may also depart 
from the routine of perception and trace ideal 
connections and unities for the will to achieve. 

The true individualism is this intellectual self- 
sufficiency, this capacity to do one's own 
thinking. Its substance is originality. It is not 
negative but creative. It is not lawlessness— a 
petulant assertion of impulse or private prefer- 
ence; but a deliverance from convention and the 
dead weight of vulgarity, to the end that the 
mind may freely judge and yield to the guidance 
of evidence and facts. It is that liberality of 
mind, that a large discourse, looking before and 
after, "that capability and Godlike reason," 
which is not given to "rust in us unused.'* 

This is essentially an individual and not a so- 
cial attribute. Whereas passion may be social, 
only an individual can think. We speak, prop- 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL i6i 

erly, of an angry mob. The mob itself may be 
angry — and is a very different thing from, say, a 
thousand men each of whom is angry all by him- 
self. Individualities melt and coalesce in the 
heat of passion, and the mob feels and acts as a 
unity. There is also such a thing as social con- 
science, or as common opinion, or as customary 
belief. Opinion and belief are states of mind 
that may assume a social form. But there is no 
such thing as a mob's making inferences or dem- 
onstrating theorems or criticising action. So- 
ciety cannot know the sense of drawing a con- 
clusion from premises or judging in the light of 
evidence. The weight of the social mass is per- 
petually tending to suppress these independent 
and solitary activities. In so far as the individual 
becomes absorbed in the mass he ceases to think, 
to criticise, and to know. The individual in de- 
tachment is the organ with which society has 
to do these things. 

Shouting with the crowd is always the line of 
least resistance. But there never has been a 
time in the world's history in which blind social 
forces have been so strong. Through the in- 
crease of facilities for transportation and com- 
munication, and through the wide diffusion of 
the rudiments of education, all men are coming 



i62 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

to form one great circle of gossip. The power- 
ful forces that impel a man to go with his crowd, 
act with it, beheve with it, feel with it, now 
operate over an enormous area, with a corre- 
spondingly irresistible power. The forces which 
thus bring men together do good or evil quite in- 
differently. It all depends on what direction they 
take. So far as they themselves are concerned, 
they may take any direction. Hence the unprec- 
edented demand for a poise and independence 
that shall permit of insight and kindle beacon 
lights to show the way. 

Where is that theoretical capacity which makes 
the free mind, to be cultivated ? This is, I believe, 
the great and the unique opportunity of the 
university. Let the university dedicate itself 
to this one form of service, and make every con- 
cession which this service requires. Here is the 
crux of this much-disputed matter of academic 
liberty. Whatever restraints it may be neces- 
sary to impose elsewhere, the imiversity should 
be the one community that tolerates eccentricity 
and conceit in the hope that once in a while they 
may be, as they often are, the marks of growing 
genius. Being normal, being a good average 
man, of the familiar and popular type, is cer- 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 163 

tainly agreeable; but it should, in a imiversity 
at least, be regarded as not deserving of special 
note or praise. Most men are normal, and many 
will inevitably be or become so, for the simple 
reason that we call normal what most men are 
or tend to become. Exceptionality, distinction 
is the thing, and to encourage it one must regard 
the freak or queer man not with hostility but 
with hopeful interest. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that one in- 
stitution like the university should be expected 
to do every good thing at once. We are grateful 
to Colonel Goethals for having built the Panama 
Canal; it would be unreasonable to withhold 
our praise until we have learned whether he is a 
good tennis-player or has a fine ear for music. 
If we can find a doctor who can cure our bodies, 
we do not ask him to save our souls. We do not 
charge him with impiety because he does not espe- 
cially interest himself in the matter. Similarly, 
the university is not designed to be a nursery, 
reform school, Sunday-school, armory or social 
club. Other institutions are. Let each institu- 
tion be judged by its success in its own field. 
Let the university be looked to as a school for 
intellectual leadership. If it does not do this 
work, criticise it — or, better still, help it. But 



i64 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

do not confuse the situation by asking it to pro- 
tect the innocent, spread the true faith or stim- 
ulate good-fellowship. If it does these things, as 
it no doubt will in a degree, so much the bet- 
ter; but they are not, in its case, the one thing 
needful. 

Above all, do not ask the university to be 
merely useful. It would be much as though you 
should ask Newton to be a mechanic or Raphael 
a house painter. Keep the money-changer out 
of the temple of knowledge. It is better that a 
university should be a zoological garden of strange 
beasts, or even a museum of antiquities, than 
that it should become a mere corner of the mar- 
ket-place. Disorder, impiety, iconoclasm are not 
evils in a university. They are the by-products 
and symptoms of its proper spirit and genius. 
That which is evil, and evil unmitigated, is con- 
servatism, traditionalism, worldliness, conven- 
tionality, or the artificial prolongation of infancy. 
Here the youthful intellect must be urged to play 
with fire in order that it may receive its baptism. 
The wholesome university type is the bold and 
radical mind, that is not afraid to challenge the 
existing order of things. 

It is well that we should imderstand that a gen- 
uinely free mind will criticise both the economic 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 165 

and the political establishments, as well as the 
prevailing religion — ^for which in these days we 
appear to feel less solicitude. It was once fondly 
supposed that a free mind could be confined to 
the circle of its own private thoughts, in order 
that institutions might go unscathed. This was 
the compromise adopted by the philosophers of 
the seventeenth century. Its impossibility is the 
lesson of the eighteenth century. Institutions 
lie in the path of the critical mind, which cannot 
ignore them without retreating. The radical 
mind, furthermore, perfects its service only 
through a criticism and rationalization of life. 
A university must not only protect the liberty 
of criticising economic institutions; it must 
cultivate the propensity to criticise them. For 
otherwise social progress is left to the spasmodic 
benevolence of those who possess, or to the 
hunger and resentment of those who want. 

If the university to serve its end must be free 
from the control, or even the influence, of any eco- 
nomic establishment, it is no less necessary that 
it should be independent of political institutions 
or policies. Here is a point of contact between 
the life of the nation and the larger life of the 
race. It is necessary that a state should pursue 
a policy, and that a nation should have a special 



1 66 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

character, which at the same time distinguishes 
and narrows it. But national life needs to be 
kept sweet by open inlets from the common past, 
from different and complementary cultures, and 
from the great neutral world of the intellect and 
the imagination. The university is one of the 
greatest of these channels. Its place is not in 
the midst of the nation, but on the border where 
it may command what lies beyond. 

If this be the true ideal of a university it is 
clear that it calls for a very special and generous 
kind of loyalty on the part of its benefactors, 
or on the part of the citizens who support it for 
the good of the conmixmity. If you would be 
the true friend or benefactor of a university give 
to it not in order that your opinions may pre- 
vail, but in order that truth may prevail. Serve 
it, not to promote your own ideas, but in order 
that there may he ideas. Rejoice that there is 
more in the world than you would ever have 
thought of yourself. Cheerfully tolerate, and 
even help, for the sake of the greater wisdom 
that may come of it in the end, opinions that 
you do not agree with. Encourage inquiry, 
criticism and knowledge even when you don't 
understand, and thereby prove that you have 
more confidence in man than you have in your 
own powers. 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 167 

If this be the true ideal of a university it follows 
that its teachers should be primarily men of knowl- 
edge, men of trained critical, experimental and 
theoretical capacity. These men must be given 
the opportunity and the facilities for research. 
They must be admired for what they achieve in 
research, and not blamed for failure to achieve 
some other thing like popularity, or invention, 
or virtue, or personal beauty, which are not the 
particular ends to which they are called. And 
this spirit of research should be diffused among 
students, so that they may know how to value 
knowledge, or may know what they know and 
what they do not. 

In other words, university teaching should 
be so conducted as to make every student ac- 
quainted with the way in which knowledge is 
formed, in order that he may know how far he 
may trust the prevailing ideas of his time. Those 
who devote themselves to the making of knowl- 
edge will necessarily be a smaU fraction of society, 
but all the more reason why good judgment, or 
the general capacity for criticism should be widely 
diffused. The very presence in an educational 
centre of men of intellectual originality will go 
far toward effecting such a result by example 
and contagious admiration. But it is also im- 
portant that knowledge of all sorts should be 



i68 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

so taught as to impart not only the conclusions, 
but also something of the method by which these 
conclusions are reached. Every university stu- 
dent should be brought to the frontier where he 
may witness for himself the conversion of igno- 
rance into knowledge, and where he may exercise 
himself in the art, even though he do no more 
than solve over again the problems which great 
investigators have already solved before him. 

The great university teacher will at the same 
time quicken that native curiosity, that sheer 
inquisitiveness with which happily the mind is 
latently endowed. The great teacher will be not 
he who fills, but he who opens, the minds of his 
students. He will befriend the man who loves a 
problem and delights to solve it, in whom the in- 
tellect may enjoy itself at play; he will challenge 
and disturb that lost soul which seems to have no 
mind at all except a memory and a few prejudices. 
We hear much of the importance of having teachers 
who are vital, in touch with the world, or pos- 
sessed of a magnetic personality. But the teachers 
that have left the deepest impress upon me are 
those who somehow made me feel that to think 
and to discover and to know were glorious things 
in themselves; who never apologized for them 
or tried to justify them in terms of something 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 169 

else, but exhibited so sincere a devotion to them 
as to breed by contagion and example a like re- 
spect for them in others. The eager and devoted 
scholar, the man of powerful intellect and pas- 
sionate devotion to truth, has the essentials of a 
great university teacher. The rest, whether he 
be handsome, amusing, facile, or worldly-wise, is 
comparatively unimportant. 

Freedom and detachment of mind does not, 
as we have seen, imply that one shall occupy 
oneself with recondite or artificial topics. I am 
far from proposing that a university shall ded- 
icate itself exclusively to the study of hyperspace, 
Indie philology, and the transcendental ego of 
apperception. These are proper enough objects 
of study, but they are not good illustrations of 
my meaning because they put the emphasis in 
the wrong place. It is not the subject of study 
that is to be detached from life, but the method 
and the mood of study. There is no better sub- 
ject of study for the purposes I have in mind 
than life itself. I want simply to emphasize the 
difference between studying life and living it. 
The thing you study may be as practical as you 
please. One may study commerce, or politics, 
or the distribution of wealth, or human happiness, 
or any near and familiar thing. I want only to 



I70 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

urge that it is the particular business of a uni- 
versity to promote a free, cool and profound 
study of these things: the sort of study which 
leads the mind to raise fundamental questions 
with a view to seizing on fundamental ideas^ or 
in the hope of an occasional flash of insight by 
which one may see far beyond one's habitual 
horizon. A single swift and momentary vision 
thus granted may endure through Ufe and make 
the difference for the balance of one's years be- 
tween intellectual slavery and intellectual emanci- 
pation. 

It is not that I disbelieve in education for 
service. It is for the sake of service that one 
must urge the imiversity to promote intellectual 
independence and originality; for to do this is 
to render that peculiar service to which the uni- 
versity is dedicated and for which it is truly in- 
dispensable. And it is because every educated 
man with any strain of nobiHty in him is going 
out in the world to serve his fellows that he 
should take with him that which will increase 
and elevate his service. He must first learn to 
think for himself. But if he does, it will turn out 
in the end that he has been thinking for others. A 
man who does not think for himself does not think 
at all. Having that power, he may be qualified 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 171 

to enlighten and to lead, when otherwise he could 
do no more than follow blindly or exert himself 
at a task of which he does not know the meaning. 
I have not meant to encourage men to cut them- 
selves off from their fellows and content them- 
selves with their own study and meditation. 
There are a few men whose pre-eminent fitness 
for an intellectual life would justify them in 
taking this course. But they are very few. Most 
men must live out in the world. And there, out 
in the world, is where there is need not so much 
of what we call "men of the world'' as of men 
of mind, men of the spirit. *^It is easy in the 
world," says Emerson, "to live after the world's 
opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our 
own; but the great man is he who in the midst 
of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the 
independence of solitude." 

To care for truth itself, and to seek to beget 
in others, not the acceptance of one's own be- 
lief, but the will to know, points to tolerance as 
the great practical virtue which must char- 
acterize university life. An intolerant man will 
prefer to be surrounded by those who have opin- 
ions similar to his own, and will not care whether 
they think or not. A truly tolerant man will 
prefer to be surrounded by those who think, and 



172 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

will care comparatively little whether they agree 
with him or not. If any community is to be an 
intellectual centre, where intellectual work is done, 
where all men learn what intellectuality is, and 
where some may be expected to contract it them- 
selves, there must be a love of truth itself, and 
an earnest desire that it shall prevail, which is 
stronger than the love of any single opinion. 
There must be a sort of intellectual high spirits, 
in which one loves a brave foe more than a craven 
follower. It is often supposed that being tolerant 
means having no conviction. Thus Robert 
Browning said: "There are those who believe 
something, and therefore wiU tolerate nothing; 
and, on the other hand, those who tolerate every- 
thing, because they believe nothing.'' But it is 
not impossible, nor even rare, among persons of 
genuine intellectual zeal both to have convic- 
tions and also to love in others that quality of 
mind that will express itself in contrary opinions. 
I think that the noblest words which were ever 
said of university education were those said of 
Harvard by William James upon the occasion of 
his receiving the LL.D. degree in 1903.^ He 
spoke as one who was in a certain sense an 

* Published under the title of "The True Harvard," in Memories 
and Studies, pp. 348-355. 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 173 

outsider at Harvard, for he had never been an 
undergraduate of the college; he had never sat 
in the cheering section at football games, he had 
not been a member of undergraduate clubs, and 
it is altogether probable that he had never partici- 
pated in any form of collective college enthusiasm. 
He had no class to walk with in the commence- 
ment procession. He did not seek to behttle 
these things because he had no part in them, but 
rather to describe another sort of loyalty which 
he and others like him felt no less deeply. We 
may value our college, he virtually said, as we 
value our family, merely because it is ours, be- 
cause we are bound to it by so many associations 
and traditions; or we may value it because of 
our pride in its greatness. And he found the 
greatness of Harvard to lie, as he put it, in her 
being "a nursery for independent and lonely 
thinkers.'' Speaking of those who, like himself, 
did not belong to the Harvard family in the nar- 
rower or more clannish sense, he said: 

"They come from the remotest outskirts of 
our country, without introductions, without school 
affiliations; special students, scientific students, 
graduate students, poor students of the college, 
who make their living as they go. They hover 
in the backgroimd on days when the crimson 



174 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

color is most in evidence, but they nevertheless 
are intoxicated and exultant with the nourish- 
ment they find here. . . . When they come to 
Harvard, it is not primarily because she is a 
club. It is because they have heard of her 
persistently atomistic constitution, of her toler- 
ance of exceptionality and eccentricity, of her 
devotion to the principles of individual voca- 
tion and choice. . . . Thoughts are the precious 
seeds of which our universities should be the 
botanical gardens. Beware when God lets loose 
a thinker on the world — either Carlyle or Emer- 
son said that — ^for all things then have to rear- 
range themselves. But the thmkers in their 
youth are almost always very lonely creatiures. 
'Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the 
great streams.' The university most worthy of 
rational admiration is that one in which your 
lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most 
positively furthered, and most richly fed.*' 

There is no lover of Harvard who would not 
have Harvard be and remain deserving of such 
regard. There is no lover of any university who 
would not have his university cultivate and 
treasure this spirit, as the quintessence of liberal 
education. There is no true lover of America or 
of mankind who would not have this spirit dif- 



UNIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUAL 175 

fused whether by the university or any other 
educational agency. It is the very savor of the 
salt of emancipation and liberty. 

These are the qualities of mind in which true 
individualism is rooted: originality and indepen- 
dence, both in judgment and in imagination; a 
power to distinguish between knowledge and 
opinion, belief or information; a recognition of 
the limits and degrees of knowledge; a love of 
knowledge for its own sake; and a spirit of tol- 
erant fellowship with all who love knowledge, 
whatever be the particular opinion that they 
hold. Only that which threatens these qualities 
of mind really threatens individualism. All else 
is external, of the body and the mechanism, not of 
the soul. So long as these qualities are fostered 
and diffused we need not fear whatever of dis- 
ciplined will or of institutional organization may 
be necessary to carry forward the great designs 
of the national and collective life. 



X 

EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 

IT is unnecessary in these days to justify educa- 
tion. If there is any single idea about educa- 
tion that is now generally accepted, it is the idea 
that education is useful to the individual and im- 
perative for the community. We measure the 
civilization of any nation or section by the test 
of literacy, or by the educational facilities that 
are open to its people. Wherever democratic 
political ideals have come to prevail, it is a recog- 
nized duty of the state to provide education 
freely for all, in at least the rudiments of knowl- 
edge. In our own country we have virtually 
come to believe that mere poverty should not be 
allowed to stand in the way of even a college or 
university training for any individual who can 
demonstrate his capacity and ambition. Wherever 
high industrial or professional ideals prevail, the 
importance of a prolonged and thorough train- 
ing in engineering, law, or medicine is no longer 
doubted. And wherever democratic social ideals 

prevail, as notably in this country, it is clearly 

176 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 177 

recognized that education is the great equalizer, 
the means of compensating for the handicaps of 
birth or wealth, and of extending to all alike an 
opportunity of going as far in power, happiness 
and dignity as native capacity will permit. 

So far we must all be in hearty agreement. It 
is because every one believes in education in at 
least these aspects that so great a number of 
flourishing institutions enjoy the support and 
loyalty of the state or of private friends and 
benefactors. I do not propose to prove these 
things that require no proof. I want to confine 
my efforts to the defense of an idea that is in 
some danger of being forgotten. I refer to the 
idea of what is sometimes called liberal education. 

Whoever broadly surveys the history of ed- 
ucation will see that, at the same time that 
education has been more widely diffused and has 
gained a stronger support from public opinion 
and from the state, it has come to mean some- 
thing narrower than it once meant. The more 
clearly we have recognized that education is 
useful and necessary, the more narrowly have 
we come to insist upon its usefulness and neces- 
sity, and to be suspicious of any education the 
usefulness and necessity of which are not ap- 
parent. At the same time that the average man 



178 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

has come to be the friend and beneficiary of 
education, education has come to be the creature 
of the average man, and to reflect his characteris- 
tic standards and point of view. The danger is 
that, while everybody may become educated in a 
certain practical or vulgar sense, nobody will be 
educated in that other and less obvious sense in 
which the privileged class was once educated. 
There is danger, in short, that the very same 
forces of opinion that make it possible that every- 
body should be usefully educated should pre- 
vent anybody from being liberally educated. 

Let me illustrate the tendency which I speak 
of by referring to the choice of studies in colleges 
where there is freedom of election. Even in the 
Eastern colleges with which I am most familiar, 
colleges such as Harvard and Princeton, where, 
whether rightly or wrongly, the older humanistic 
traditions are supposed to be especially strong, 
the most notable feature of student election is 
the large resort to economics. I have not the 
least inclination to disparage the subject. I do 
not even feel sure that the tendency will not 
turn out in the end to have been a wholesome 
one. But the significant thing and, I suspect, the 
ominous thing is the motive which leads the 
average student to make such a choice. It isn't 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 179 

that he is especially interested in the solution 
of economic problems. He may and often does 
find the subject dull and imilluminating. But he 
is usually going to be either a business man or a 
lawyer, and he has heard that economics has 
something to do with business and law. He 
doesn't know that this is the case or in the least 
understand the matter. Indeed, the authorities 
of the Harvard Law School explicitly discourage 
men from attempting in any way to anticipate 
their professional studies in college. But the 
average undergraduate I speak of has somehow 
got it into his head that the study of economics is 
a kind of preliminary study of business or law. 
And so he chooses it; which proves, at any rate, 
what he is looking for, what idea he has of a col- 
lege education. He is supposing that the thing 
to do in college is to acquire the tools of some 
trade. Thus the college tends to acquire the 
spirit and tone of a trade-school. 

Another indication of the same tendency is 
the fact, which I suppose to be generally true, 
that the part of our State universities that is 
least vigorous is usually the college, or depart- 
ment of liberal arts. If this is true, then it shows 
that those who support higher education, in 
this case the citizens of a State, believe in it 



i8o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

chiefly as a means of training farmers, doctors, 
lawyers, teachers, stenographers, housekeepers, 
and engineers. 

Now, it was once supposed that it was the 
most indispensable part of higher education to 
train, or rather to develop and cultivate, men 
and women. They were taught Latin, Greek, 
mathematics, history, literature, and philosophy, 
not with the idea that they could use these things 
in earning a living, but with the idea that they 
were good for the soul. Latin and Greek, for 
example, are not any less useful than they used 
to be. The difference is that we are now more 
anxious that everything should be useful. Once 
it was thought that a trained and well-stored 
mind, a free imagination, an acquaintance with 
the past and with its triumphs and its heroes, 
were somehow great and good things of them- 
selves that went to make a full and noble life. 
Such a life was open only to the privileged few; 
but the important thing is that it was regarded 
as a privilege. Now that it may so much more 
easily be attained, it seems to have lost its value; 
and apprenticeship to a trade, once thought to 
be a disagreeable necessity, marks the limit of 
aspiration. Concerned to assert the dignity of 
labor, the modern world seems somehow to be 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM i8i 

assuming that there is nothing dignified in life 
except doing one's job or getting ready for it. 

A student who called upon me the other day- 
gave me a new and I should say ultramodern 
view of the value of the old humanistic studies. 
Having taken a chair near my desk, and cleared 
his throat, he launched the conversation by say- 
ing: "Professor, may I ask what you think of 
Emerson?'' This may seem somewhat abrupt. 
But we who teach philosophy are not surprised 
at any question; at any rate, I answered the in- 
quiring student as best I could. Whereupon he 
came back at me with more of the same kind. 
What did I think of Carlyle, of Tennyson? But 
there is a limit even to a philosopher's simple 
good faith. I must have betrayed some im- 
patience or suspicion. Whereupon he finally con- 
fessed to me that he was at Harvard to learn the 
art of salesmanship. He was particularly in- 
terested in the sale of aluminum cooking utensils. 
Some one had told him that the thing to do was 
to engage your unsuspecting victim in general 
conversation on some theme remote from the 
object of your sinister design. In this way you 
gained his confidence. So he had come to Har- 
vard to acquire conversational resources. It was 
evident that he believed in higher education. He 



i82 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

could see the use of it. He could measure the 
value of poetry in terms of tangible frying-pans 
and tea-pots. He could even see a use in per- 
sonal intercourse with his professors, since it 
might create a pretext for conversational prac- 
tise. 

So it appears that there is a chance for hberal 
studies even in a most severely utilitarian pro- 
gram ! But do they need such a utilitarian justi- 
fication? Are we to accept such a standard? 
Or have liberal studies a value pecuHar to them- 
selves which we are in danger of losing if liberal 
studies decay? I admit that I am a partisan in 
the matter. If all studies were compelled to 
prove their utility, philosophy would have to go 
by the board. I do not commend it to any one 
as a means of livelihood. But from a partisan 
you will at least get one side of the matter, and 
in this case the other side has advocates enough. 

Now what is this imique and indispensable 
value that belongs to a liberal education? I 
should emphasize first the fact that liberal educa- 
tion brings us abreast of progress. If we are to 
accept the theory of Weismann and deny the 
inheritance of acquired characters, we must sup- 
pose that progress takes place, not through the 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 183 

line of descent, but through the continuity of 
tradition and environment. By heredity we 
transmit to our children approximately what 
our parents transmitted to us. Our children 
will stand at birth where we stood at birth, with 
the same native capacities and family traits. 
In the course of our lives we have acquired 
much — new ideas, new forms of skill, new habits 
of mind. But these our children will not in- 
herit. Though we may, and in some respects 
certainly shall exceed the attainments of our 
parents, what we have gained cannot be trans- 
mitted simply by heredity. 

Is there, then, no s.ense in which our children 
profit by what we have learned, and so enjoy 
advantages superior to those which belonged to 
us as the members of an earlier generation ? Cer- 
tainly, and here lies the point. Our children will 
be surrounded from birth onward by a different 
and more advanced environment. The most im- 
portant part of that environment during the 
earlier and more plastic years will be ourselves, 
with the new things we have learned. If our 
children do not learn more, there is at least more 
to learn than there was when we were children. 
The parental type which is imitated by the chil- 
dren of to-day contains novelties which distin- 



1 84 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

guish it from the grand-parental type which was 
imitated by the children of yesterday. But the 
family is by no means the only medium of imita- 
tion. Playmates, teachers, newspapers, employ- 
ers, ministers, poets, all represent and typify the 
culture of to-day — and imprint its characteristic 
and novel form upon the growing and receptive 
minds of the younger generation. 

We must, of course, get rid of the notion of 
generation succeeding generation, like the regi- 
ments of a marching army. Generations overlap. 
There are innumerably many of them alive to- 
gether. There are those who are coming of age 
to-day, those who came of age yesterday, and 
those who will come of age to-morrow. If one 
cared to reckon in terms of hours, minutes and 
seconds, one would readily see that the number 
of different contemporary generations exceeds our 
power to count. Every individual is born into 
a world in which a certain type is growing to 
be old-fashioned, another dominates, and a third 
is regarded as advanced and radical. And there 
are indefinitely many degrees between. To-day 
horses are slightly old-fashioned, automobiles 
common and air-ships novel. This illustrates 
the present phase of civilization. A child that 
is just now most impressionable is having this 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 185 

phase impressed upon him. He will become used 
or assimilated to it, play his part in the inven- 
tion and innovation which modify it, and live 
to see his children reared in a world in which 
horses are antiquated, automobiles old-fashioned, 
air-ships common, and I know not what, noveL 

This, then, is the way that society moves. 
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a 
modern infant; merely as infant he does not rep- 
resent one time any more than another. But 
there is such a thing as a modern world. And 
it is going to make a lot of difference to the 
hapless infant what world he is born into. The 
modern world stands ready to seize upon him 
and put the imprint of modernity upon him. 
And he will be, when the world gets through with 
him, a modern man. Progress is possible because 
the past holds over into the present in the shape 
of institutions, monuments, records, customs, and 
in the shape of an existing and slowly changing 
social type. An individual may profit by this 
progress, and thus enjoy an unearned increment, 
by virtue of growing up in the midst of these 
things, imitating them, learning them, entering 
into and becoming one with them. His advan- 
tage is not one of inborn capacity, but one of 
place in history. 



i86 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

But to return to our main point — the impor- 
tance of liberal studies. We may now say that 
their importance lies first of all in their enabling 
an individual to enjoy to the full all the advantages 
of his place in history. They enable an individual 
to take possession of the inheritance that has been 
accumulated for him. 

If what I have said is true, it ought to follow 
that in proportion as a man is untutored he is 
not a man of his age at all. He might just as 
well have been born a thousand years ago. Sup- 
pose a child to be kept altogether from educative 
influences, simply fed and kept alive, and he 
would not belong to the present any more than 
to the past. He would have no place in his- 
tory at all. It would be as absurd to speak of 
him as modem as it would be to speak of the 
modern whale or the modern ant. While no in- 
dividual has ever been cut off altogether from the 
spirit of his age, I think any one will readily agree 
that this is in a large measure true of millions 
of our fellow men. And one will agree, I think, 
that, in principle, being a man of the age depends 
upon the enjoyment of educational opportunities. 
IlHteracy, grinding toil, rigid customs, physical 
remoteness, lack of facilities for communication, 
imply stagnation in a primitive, monotonous and 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 187 

timeless animal existence. There are millions of 
peasants and laborers who enter upon a mechan- 
ical routine of life, driven by the necessity of 
livelihood, without ever having had a chance to 
acquire and utilize the accumulations of the past. 
They live and die as genuinely cut off and dis- 
inherited from the history of civilization as their 
cattle or beasts of burden. 

There is another class who acquire the fashions 
of their age, but nothing more. Such men get 
just so much of the life of their times as can be 
derived from superficial contact and external 
imitation. They become men of the modern 
age in so far as this consists in using current 
slang, singing topical songs, wearing clothes of a 
conventional pattern and being familiar with the 
latest material conveniences. Externally, they 
are up to date; internally, they are simply hu- 
man animals belonging to no time, and none the 
richer by the accident of being born here and 
now. 

Viewed in the light of these facts, a liberal 
education should be regarded as the means of 
introducing the younger generation to its birth- 
right, a sort of visiting the ancestral estate be- 
fore taking possession. The best example of 
what I mean is afforded by historical studies, 



i88 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

not only history in the usual sense of poHtical 
history, but history as a record of man's past 
achievements in art, science, industry, and relig- 
ion. The study of history in this sense is like 
pausing on one's journey to take a long look 
backward, so that one may see the direction of 
one's way, and realize vividly the place one has 
reached. And through history, one takes over 
the past and makes it one's own. One becomes 
so connected with the past, that one can be said 
to carry it on, or to begin where it leaves off. 
It is like running a relay race; when one's turn 
comes, one has to touch the last runner in order 
to take up the race in his stead, inheriting at the 
start the advantage that he and others before 
him have earned. Historical studies are a sort 
of touching of the past by which one claims one's 
place in the race, and runs not in the first but in 
the third or fourth millennium. 

The first characteristic of liberal studies, then, 
is their affording a retrospect of civilization, 
giving the individual an opportunity to claim 
the past of mankind as his own past, and start- 
ing him abreast of his times. The extent to which 
one values a liberal education will so far depend 
upon the extent to which one wishes to claim 
one's title to the accumulated learning, experience 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 189 

and achievements of man, or is satisfied to be 
disinherited — a person of no time, enjoying no 
point of vantage in the scale of progress. 

Let us turn to a second characteristic. I have 
been using the phrase "Hberal studies'' without 
explaining the meaning of the word "liberal." 
It means "free" or "generous." But why does 
one speak of studies as free, or generous? In 
contrast, I take it, with studies in which one is 
constrained by routine, or by the need of liveli- 
hood. But there is a more positive sense in which 
certain studies may be said to be free: in the 
sense, namely, of making free, or of increasing 
freedom. 

It seems fairly obvious that freedom is somehow 
proportional to the range of alternatives from 
which we may choose. If, as we say, "we have 
no other alternative," then what we do is the 
only thing we can do and is, therefore, necessary. 
Similarly, we say of a man, "He never had a 
chance to do otherwise," and find in that fact 
evidence of lack of freedom. Now, there is noth- 
ing that limits and reduces freedom so commonly 
as ignorance. In order that things shall be real 
alternatives for our choice, we have got to know 
about them; the things we have never heard of 



iQo THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

are the things we have never had the least chance 
of doing. It follows that a wide range of knowl- 
edge — ^knowing about a great many things — 
multiplies our freedom and increases the extent 
to which we may be said to do what we really 
want rather than what circumstance dictates. 
What civilization makes possible, education may 
make real; for liberal education here again is 
what really brings the individual and the civiliza- 
tion of his age together. Viewed in this light, 
liberal education is a wide survey of the field of 
life, a broad outlook over all its manifold possi- 
bilities, so that one may choose in the presence 
of all the varied possibilities. 

The most far-reaching choice that a man 
makes is the choice of work. To a very large 
extent, far more so than we ordinarily imder- 
stand, the work dictates to the man, when once 
he undertakes it A job is a hard master. There 
is just one moment at which the job is not the 
master, and that is the moment at which one 
chooses the job. Hence, if one never deliberately 
chooses the job, but simply grows up to it, or falls 
into it by accident, or is thrust into it by others 
or by the pressure of need, then one loses forever 
that moment of freedom. There is a sense in 
which everybody has a job sooner or later. It 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 191 

need not be one of the regularly defined profes- 
sions or trades. But one finds a place somewhere 
in the world's work, and once in the place, the 
work is, as we say, "cut ouf for one. If one is 
to be free, then, one must be conscious, alive to 
the situation, and in some measure, at least, 
choose for oneself the work that one shall do. 
And the more completely one is aware of the 
varied possibilities which life affords, the freer 
is one's choice. 

Liberal education, then, is the sort of educa- 
tion that helps one to choose one's work freely, 
rather than the kind of education that fits one 
for one's chosen work. The traditional view that 
one's college days are the days in which one 
should be deciding what to do is essentially cor- 
rect. And the studies which one pursues should 
be primarily those which present the alternatives 
in all their multiplicity and variety. They should 
enable one for the moment to take a general 
view before one descends into the plain and takes 
one's place. For in the plain, such general views 
are rare, and it is harder to profit by them 
even when one has them. "It is not the inten- 
tion of Nature," says Emerson, "that one should 
live by general views. We fetch fire and water, 
run about all day among the shops, and markets, 



192 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, 
and are the victims of these details, and once in 
a fortnight we arrive, perhaps, at a rational 
moment. '^ The period of liberal education should 
be the greatest of such rational moments, the 
lucid interval, when we look all about, spy out 
the promised land, and are for once free. 

It follows that this period of liberal study may 
well be a period of desultory attention, of a sort 
of spiritual idling and irresponsibility, when ac- 
cording to the standards of efficiency, time is 
wasted. To look back upon one's college days 
from the standpoint of an established position 
in the world, and say: "My college studies have 
not helped me to succeed,'* is to betray an ut- 
terly wrong notion as to the essential purpose 
of college education. It was their essential 
purpose not to prepare one to succeed in the 
practise of law, for example, but to help one to 
decide wisely and freely whether to aspire to such 
success. Consulting the time-table does not 
help you to catch your train, but it does play an 
important part in your deciding what train to 
catch. Among other things, it shows you what- 
trains there are to catch, and the destinations to 
which they are likely to carry you. 

It is clear that one cannot judge the value of 



EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 193 

a liberal education by the standards of success 
or efficiency. It is quite essential to its value 
that one should hold such standards in abeyance. 
It requires an attitude quite different from that 
which is required by the actual contest of life, 
as different as the attitude of the general who 
plans a campaign is different from his attitude 
when he executes it. Once the forward move- 
ment is on, what is required is courage, persis- 
tence, skill, patience, and single-minded devo- 
tion to the matter in hand. These are the vir- 
tues of action. But other virtues are required 
in the time of deliberation and counsel, such 
virtues as imagination, breadth of view, and 
statesmanship. To profit most by liberal study 
or to acquire that which is peculiarly valuable in 
it, one needs freedom and elasticity of mind, the 
proverbial '^ generosity of youth," openness of 
mind, quickness of response, a toleration of the 
most ancient heresies, and an eager interest in 
the most radical novelties; so that for once, 
albeit for only a fleeting moment, aU things shall 
have presented themselves and had their chance 
of acceptance or rejection. 

There are few branches of knowledge that 
may not be liberal studies if only they be taken 
in this spirit. What I have said does not argue 



194 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

for a narrowing of the curriculum to the study 
of the ancient languages. On the contrary, as 
William James has said, "we must shake the old 
double reefs out of the canvas into the wind and 
sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure 
that any subject will prove humanistic, if its 
setting be kept only wide enough." For a liberal 
education means, primarily, a retrospect of the 
past, an assimilation of the civilization of one's 
age, and a wide acquaintance with the possibilities 
of life, in order that choice of vocation may be 
wise and free. 



XI 

THE USELESS VIRTUES 

IF all the good advice that has ever been given 
were to be brought together and compared, 
it would probably be discovered that every piece 
could be matched with a contrary piece given 
by somebody else. The world's practical wis- 
dom does not form a consistent system. No one 
man could possibly believe all of it at the same 
time. For example, there is equally good author- 
ity for believing that woman is the tyrant of 
man, and for believing that she is his puppet. 
Victor Hugo tells us that "men are women's 
playthings; woman is the devil's"; while an- 
other Frenchman, Michelet, tells us that "nearly 
every folly committed by woman is bom of the 
stupidity or evil influence of man." But it may 
be argued that in this case it is the very paradox 
itself which is proverbial. Take the less familiar 
example of self-consciousness. There are the 
moralists whose primary maxim is the Delphic 

195 



196 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

oracle, "Know thyself.'' "We should every 
night call ourselves to an account," says Seneca. 
"What infirmity have I mastered to-day? What 
passion opposed? What temptation resisted? 
What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of 
themselves if they be brought every day to the 
shrift." This is accounted wise, and carries con- 
viction to conscience. But so does the contrary 
preaching of Carlyle, with his tirade against the 
"tmhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey, pre- 
cursor and prognostic of still worse health." 

It is painful to contemplate the volume of 
discordant advice that is poured from pulpits, 
platforms and editorial columns into the ears of 
that hapless reprobate, the plain man. It is 
perhaps fortunate that so Httle of it is followed, 
for it is always one-sided. It is characteristic 
of most advice and exhortation that it is only a 
part of the truth. It is an exaggeration of that 
particular half-truth which the exhorter thinks 
is timely, and which he believes is going to be 
offset by contrary influences. It is a push against 
some existing overtendency, an attempt to stem 
some tide that is running too high, in the hope 
of securing that balance and moderation in which 
right conduct always consists. 

This is my apology for appearing with an ex- 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 197 

hortation which on the face of it may appear to 
be strained or even absurd. For I propose, in a 
sense, to preach against efficiency or success, I do 
so not because I do not see their importance, but 
because I suspect that my reader will already 
know their importance well enough, and pos- 
sibly even too well. Or if he does not, there are 
many who can proclaim that importance more 
eloquently than I. There is something abroad, 
an irresistible social impulse, which is tending 
to promote the useful virtues, to encourage thrift, 
initiative, industry, co-operation, civic pride, and 
all those qualities of mind and will that make 
commimities soimd and prosperous. But were 
I to join the general praise of efficiency and utility, 
I should be seeing only half the truth. And I 
know that, if I were to follow the line of less re- 
sistance and urge what everybody already wants, 
I should be forfeiting the greater opportimity of 
speaking a word for that half-truth which has 
difficulty in getting a hearing and needs the 
strong support of every teacher or preacher. I 
want, therefore, to make out as strong a case as 
I can for what may in a sense be called the useless 
virtues, for those qualities of mind and will which 
cannot be measured by the standard of efficiency 
— ^whose very value, indeed, is inseparable from 



198 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the fact that they do not immediately contrib- 
ute to practical success. 

First of all it is necessary that we should re- 
flect upon the meaning of a word that is perpet- 
ually in our mouths — the word "practical." It 
is not customary for us to reflect upon its meaning 
at all. It is supposed to express a finality. To 
call a thing practical is to praise it; to call it im- 
practical is to condemn it. It never occurs to 
us as a rule that practicality is a special kind of 
value. If that did occur to us, then, of course, 
we should be in the position of admitting that 
there is at least one other kind of value from which 
it may be distinguished. And this would be 
equivalent to admitting that when we call a 
thing practical or impractical we have not, as 
is usually assumed, provided sufficient grounds 
for approving or rejecting it. 

Let me select a homely example which wiU 
bring out what appears to me to be the meaning 
of practicality. Suppose a man to be driven to 
the roof of a burning building, while a crowd is 
gathered below to offer help or suggestions. 
Jones shouts, "Get a ladder!" or indicates where 
one may be had, or gets one himself. Brown 
points out an adjacent roof by which the refugee 
may pass to a place of safety. Several Smiths 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 199 

fetch a blanket and hold it to break his fall. 
Socrates who has happened by, and who appears 
to be less agitated than the rest, remarks (largely 
to himself, for he can find few to listen to him) : 
"I wonder what the man really wants. He ap- 
pears to be desperately anxious to save his life. 
But is his Hfe after all so prodigiously important 
as to warrant all this excitement? Has he good 
reasons for wishing to save himself? And what 
a poorly organized community is this, where such 
a thing should be allowed to occur! Why are 
buildings not fireproof? What carelessness can 
have started the fire?" But before Socrates can 
proceed further with his ruminations he is roughly 
brushed aside. If he receives any consideration 
at all he will be regarded as a poor lunatic, or 
philosopher, or college professor. 

Now, which among these men is the practical 
man, and which the unpractical? I do not sup- 
pose that there can be the slightest doubt in any 
one's mind. The Joneses, the Browns, and the 
Smiths are the practical men, and Socrates (there 
is rarely even one such in any crowd) is theoretical, 
academic, a creature of mere intellect; harmless 
enough if he will only stay at home and write 
books which nobody reads, but very much in 
the way when there is something to be done. 

But what is the precise difference between the 



200 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

Joneses, the Browns, and the Smiths on the one 
hand, and Socrates on the other? It appears to 
me that it comes down to this. The practical 
men accept circimistances as they find them. 
They take it for granted that the man wants to 
escape from the roof; and they regard the fire as 
an existing fact which is not, for the moment at 
least, to be explained, but to be acted on. They 
do not go behind this concrete and present situa- 
tion, except so far as to assume on the victim's 
part the normal instinct of self-preservation. 
Taking these things for granted, without con- 
sciously reflecting upon them at all, they can 
devote all their faculties and energies to contriv- 
ing a remedy. In so far as their minds are en- 
gaged at all they will be bent upon finding the 
means that will fit the situation. In this way 
the problem is enormously simplified, and there 
is strong likelihood of a prompt and effectual 
solution. If the crowd were made up entirely of 
Socrateses pondering all the whys and where- 
fores, life would be lost before any conclusions 
whatsoever would have been reached. To be 
practical, in short, is to confine one's attention 
to the effectual meeting of existing emergencies. 
President Cleveland invented a phrase which 
is an almost perfect expression of the attitude of 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 20i 

practicality. There is nothing profound about 
it, nor does it possess any striking Hterary merit; 
but it never fails to appeal, and has become a 
part of our common speech, so thoroughly does it 
coincide with the bias of common sense. He once 
remarked, as every one knows: "It is a condi- 
tion, and not a theory, that confronts us." I 
do not remember what condition it was that 
confronted us; but the practical man is always 
confronted by a condition. I shall suggest pres- 
ently that every condition does in truth involve 
a theory; but if so, the practical man ignores it. 
His practicality lies in confining himself to find- 
ing an act which will meet the condition. He 
has a family which must be supported, or an in- 
dustrial plant which must be made to pay, or 
an examination which must be passed, or a game 
which must be won, or an ofiice to which he pro- 
poses to be elected. His problem is the com- 
paratively narrow and simple problem of finding 
the instrument to fit the occasion and achieve 
the result. 

As a nation, we are commonly accused by un- 
sympathetic Europeans of being excessively prac- 
tical. We are supposed to specialize in practi- 
cality. Thus, when England wants a railroad 
system reorganized she looks to America for a 



202 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

manager, and when Germany wants to make a bet- 
ter record in the Olympic games she sends to Amer- 
ica for a trainer. There is less demand in Europe 
for American poets and musical composers, and, 
I regret to say, for American philosophers. Now 
we may beheve that this reputation is not de- 
served, or we may glory in it. But in either case 
we can afford at least to see just what it means. 
Consider for a moment the verdict of one of 
our harshest critics, Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson, 
of Cambridge University. "I am inclined to 
think," he says, "that the real end which Amer- 
icans set before themselves is Acceleration. To 
be always moving, and always moving faster, 
that they think is the beatific life; and with their 
happy detachment from philosophy and specula- 
tion, they are not troubled by the question. 
Whither? If they are asked by Europeans, as 
they sometimes are, what is the point of going 
so fast? their only feeling is one of genuine 
astonishment. Why, they reply, you go fast! 
And what more can be said?''^ 

Now no doubt this is a libel upon the American 
people, and might justly be resented. Or it 
might perhaps be proved that Mr. Dickinson's 
fellow countrymen are just as guilty in intent as 

^ A Modern Symposium, pp. 104-105. 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 203 

we are. Perhaps they want to move fast, but, 
failing to do it, try to make out that the game 
isn't worth the candle, and that their rivaFs vic- 
tory is hollow and fruitless; as a man who saw 
that he was losing a race might withdraw and 
try to persuade the spectators that it was a 
very childish and undignified proceeding anyhow. 
There would doubtless be a dash of truth in such 
a retort, just enough to enable you to get the 
laugh on the other fellow. But it would be a 
shrewder thing to detect the truth in the criti- 
cism, learn one's fault, correct it, and leave the 
critic himself to stagnate in his own complacency. 
Now Mr. Dickinson's criticism brings out 
cleverly enough the meaning of that practicality 
on which we pride ourselves, and which we hastily 
assume to be an absolute standard. Practicality 
means skill, energy, speed, quantity of perform- 
ance, without reference to the profitableness of 
the result. Not that the result may not in point 
of fact be profitable; the question simply is not 
raised. The profitableness of the result is as- 
sumed from the fact that everybody is mad 
about it. As the popular song puts it, "every- 
body's doing it." Whatever everybody is doing 
recommends itself without further justification. 
Whatever everybody's doing is "the thing to do." 



204 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

A man is willing to wear anything apparently, 
if his tailor says, "they're wearing them that 
way/' So we eagerly adopt the pursuits that 
we find in vogue, and apply ourselves to making 
a good showing. 

Most people, perhaps, appear to be dividing 
their energies between three pursuits: making 
money, dancing, and playing baseball or watch- 
ing some one else play it. To make as much 
money as possible, to dance as well or as often as 
possible, and to defeat your opponent in sport, 
either personally or vicariously through a favorite 
team — these tasks absorb the energies of the 
typical practical man. He does not adopt and 
follow a plan of life by conscious reflection, but 
he is constantly in a current of life, which flows 
now this way and now that, and sweeps him along 
with it. Or the practical man is like a man who 
finds himself in a great throng of athletes who 
are matching their skill and speed and prowess 
against one another. He goes in for this or that, 
spurred by emulation, and seeks to outstrip his 
competitors in some race without concerning him- 
self with the direction of the course and the place 
in which he will find himself at the end of the race. 

There is a false proverb which teaches us that 
whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 205 

I call it false because it is so evident that there 
are some things which are only worth doing pro- 
vided one is willing to do them ill. It is a part 
of practical wisdom to know what it is worth 
while to exert oneself about, and what may be 
done in a spirit of playful carelessness. But there 
is a more popular maxim which is so widely ob- 
served that it is never formulated — the maxim 
that whatever is done well is worth doing. This, 
I take it, is the maxim of the practical man. 
Do what the next man is doing, but go him one 
better. Make a record. There is a whole code 
of life in this passion for records. To make or 
hold a record means to excel everybody else in 
a precisely measurable degree. To excel every- 
body else in an activity in which everybody else 
would like to excel, to hold the most coveted record^ 
this would represent the supreme practical suc- 
cess. 

We should now be sufficiently clear in our 
minds as to what practicality means. But it is 
evident that our critics in judging us to be a 
peculiarly practical people mean to accuse us of 
a fault, and we shall not have understood the 
criticism until we have come to see wherein the 
fault lies. It is evident that Mr. Dickinson, for 



2o6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

example, means to convey the idea that this 
question, Whither? — which is said to trouble us 
so little — ^is an important question, and that we 
are making a serious mistake in ignoring it. He 
would mean, I think, to go further, and assert 
that this question. Whither? is the most impor- 
tant question. 

When we examine the matter more narrowly, 
it appears to come to this. The very same in- 
stance of successful effort may be glorious or 
ridiculous, according as the result is itself worth 
while or not. I remember an adventure of my 
own that is in point. I left Cambridge with a 
friend to catch a six-o'clock boat for Portland, 
Maine. We had been delayed in starting and 
upon consulting our watches in the car we found 
that unless we adopted extraordinary measures 
we should miss the boat. So we leaped from 
the car and hailed a passing cab. We bribed the 
driver to whip his horse into a gallop. As we 
approached the dock we saw the boat moving. 
Jumping from the cab v/ith bags in hand, we ran 
down the dock and leaped aboard, flushed with 
our triumph. We had exerted ourselves desper- 
ately; we had been quick-witted and skilful, and 
I suspect that we had created a record. We had 
certainly succeeded. But when our excitement 
and breathlessness subsided we discovered that 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 207 

the boat was just arriving j and that it would not 
depart for several hours. Then something very 
extraordinary happened to our triumph. It sud- 
denly collapsed and shrivelled into a sorry joke. 
We felt ashamed and ridiculous, and sought to 
hide our diminished heads in the impersonal 
throng of bystanders. 

I wonder if there is any better definition of 
that most hateful of predicaments, which we 
describe as "having made a fool of oneself,** 
than to say that it is to have exerted oneself for 
an end that turns out to be worthless in the attain- 
ment. Suppose a man to have devoted himself 
passionately to the accumulation of riches, to 
have spent himself, literally, in getting them, and 
to have prided himself on his skill and efficiency, 
only to find that the riches do not amount to 
anything when he has them; so that although 
he has been so extraordinarily busy in doing, he 
has in reality done nothing. Such a man might 
well feel in the flat and empty years of his ebbing 
life that he had played the fool, and that he might 
better have been less busy, if only he might then 
have taken a little time to think ahead and select 
some worthy goal before throwing himself head- 
long into the pursuit. 

A moment's thought about the ends themselves, 
looking before you leap, curiously inquiring into 



2o8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the itinerary before joining the procession, a 
little cool philosophy before the heat of action, 
disinterested reflection, these are what I mean by 
the useless virtues — the unpractical wisdom of 
Socrates. Surely such wisdom has its place. 
You cannot make life up out of it altogether. 
Socrates in his most Socratic moods will not 
make an effective member of the fire brigade. 
There are times for action, and when they come 
the man of the hour is he who has no doubts, but 
only instincts and habits. Our instincts and 
habits, however, take care of themselves better 
than does our cool reflection. The mood of prac- 
ticality is the vulgar mood; not in the sense of 
being debased, but in the sense of being usual or 
typical. For the individual it is the line of less 
resistance. Being usual, it sets the standards by 
which a man is judged by the crowd. It is favored 
by that popular prejudice called common sense. 
It requires no exhortation of mine in order to get 
a hearing. Therefore I urge, doubtless with some 
exaggeration, the value of the rarer but not less 
indispensable mood. 

It would seem that practical efficiency and 
disinterested reflection might then divide life be- 
tween them, each having its appropriate season, 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 209 

and each requiring in society at large its special 
organs and devotees. But since we are for the 
moment the partisans of disinterested reflection, 
let us recognize a certain advantage that it has 
over its rival — the advantage, namely, of mag- 
nanimity. I mean that while disinterested re- 
flection acknowledges the merit of its rival, prac- 
tical efficiency in its haste and narrow bent is 
likely to be blind and intolerant. If I were asked, 
"What, in the name of common sense, is philos- 
ophy?" I should be unable to answer. There 
is no answer. For amongst the categories of com- 
mon sense there is no provision for philosophy. 
With a person wholly dominated by common 
sense, caught and swept along in the tide of prac- 
tical endeavor, or wholly dominated by social 
habit, the philosophical part is in disuse and 
may be atrophied altogether. But if I ask, 
"What, in the name of philosophy, is common 
sense?" I can find an answer — ^just such an 
answer perhaps as we are now giving. In short, 
disinterested reflection is more inclusive, and 
more circumspect, than practicality. 

But I have not even yet exhausted the peculiar 
merits of the unpractical value of disinterested 
reflection. I have spoken of its importance as 
testing the value of ends, and so confirming or 



2IO THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

discrediting our more impetuous practical en- 
deavor. But there is another point. I refer to 
the advantage of imapplied knowledge as giving 
man resourcefulness and adaptability, a capacity 
to meet novel situations. Let me attempt to 
make my meaning clear. 

We praise science in these days, and most of 
us prefer it to poetry or philosophy, because we 
can see the use of it. It is characteristic of our 
practical standards that we regard such men as 
Watts, Bell, Morse and Edison as typifying the 
value of science. The inventor, the engineer, is 
the man of solid achievement. Why? Because, 
again, he supplies that for which the need is al- 
ready felt. We want light, communication and 
transportation, and such men as these give us 
what we want. Therefore we are gratefid. Sim- 
ilarly, the man who discovers a cure for cancer 
will be a hero among men. There is a powerful 
demand, an eager longing for that which he will 
have to give, and his reward will be ready for 
him when he comes. 

Now we need not disparage his glory. But this 
is perfectly certain: when the discovery is made, 
it will be due to the store of physical, chemical, 
physiological, and anatomical truth which has 
been acciunulated by men who were animated 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 2H 

mainly by theoretical motives. These investi- 
gators have devoted themselves to winning knowl- 
edge for which there was at the time no practi- 
cal demand. This means that they had to be 
sustained by something else than the popular ap- 
plause which greets the man with the remedy. 
Such men are sustained no doubt by the en- 
couragement of their fellow investigators, or by 
the patronage of the state. But they rely more 
than the inventor or engineer upon the inward 
support of their own love of truth, and upon a 
certain just pride of the intellect, such as Kepler 
felt when he wrote in the Preface to his Welt- 
harmonik : "Here I cast the die, and write a book 
to be read, whether by contemporaries or by pos- 
terity, I care not; it can wait for readers thou- 
sands of years, seeing that God himself waited 
six thousand years for some one to contemplate 
his work.'* 

But I had not meant to be sentimental about 
it, or to claim a greater heroism for the detached 
investigator. Indeed there is a sense in which 
his conduct is less praiseworthy, in so far as it 
is often self-regarding or unsocial, lacking in that 
motive of service which we rightly require of 
perfect conduct. It is suflScient that we should 
see that what he does is indispensable. It is 



212 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

through his efforts that man is put into posses- 
sion of a stock of free and unappropriated ideas 
with which to meet unexpected and unpredictable 
emergencies, or on which to construct new hypoth- 
eses. It is this possession of an ample margin 
of knowledge over the recognized practical neces- 
sities, of intellectual capitaly so to speak, that is 
the condition of progress. It is this which more 
than anything else marks the difference between 
man and the brute, or between progressive so- 
cieties and those static, barbarian societies in 
which human energy is exhausted by the effort 
to preserve existence with no hope of betterment. 

It is now evident enough that what I have 
called useless virtues, or unpractical values, are 
not divorced from life in any absolute or ultimate 
sense. We may as well declare once and for all 
that there is no virtue or value whatsoever that 
is divorced from life in such a sense. That it is 
impossible that knowledge should be absolutely 
useless is self-evident. For to know at all is to 
know the world we live in, and to know it is to 
bring it within the range of action, pave the way 
to the control of it. The better we know our 
world the more effectually we can live in it. This 
holds unqualifiedly. But there is a very great 



THE USELESS VIRTUES 213 

difference between what we might more correctly 
call long-range and short-range practicality. 

What we usually speak of as practical would 
correspond to what I here speak of as short- 
range practicality. It means a readiness to meet 
the immediate occasion as is dictated by the mo- 
mentary desire. Such practicality is a perpetual 
meeting of emergencies. It is a sort of living 
from hand to mouth, an uninspired and unil- 
lumined opportunism. That which is ordinarily 
condemned as unpractical, and which is unprac- 
tical from this narrow standpoint, may now be 
called long-range practicality. That is to say, it 
is that prevision, that thorough intellectual equip- 
ment, that wisdom as to the ultimate and com- 
parative worth of things, without which there can 
be no security nor any confirming sense of genu- 
ine achievement. It is that which makes the 
difference between making a fool of oneself, how- 
ever earnestly or even successfully, and living in 
a manner which would be able to endure the test 
of time. 



XII 

THE CONDESCENDING MAN AND THE 
OBSTRUCTIVE WOMAN 

CAN the free man, in keeping with his code 
of freedom, deny that prerogative to women ? 
It is a very personal matter, and as public is- 
sues go, a relatively simple matter. Let us put 
it as concretely as possible. Your neighbor has 
asked that her voice be heard and that her will 
be counted in deciding some matter of general 
neighborhood policy, such, for example, as the 
construction of a new street. It so happens that 
this particular neighbor has a very lively interest 
in the matter, being, let us say, the owner of 
property through which the projected street 
would pass. She asks you to consent to some 
change of procedure that will enable her to repre- 
sent her own interest and to have her will count 
as one among the rest. Your first impulse is 
to smile — the outward expression of your feeling 
of incongruity. Such a smile is the restrained 
way of manifesting that delicate derision with 

214 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 215 

which irregularity is greeted by the perfectly 
habituated. It is what remains when civilization 
has refined away the boorish laughter with which 
the natural man condemns a breach of custom or 
departure from the familiar type. You have 
been used to settling affairs with men whose 
wives you have met only in those lighter pastimes 
known as "society." 

But after the first shock the realities of the 
situation press upon you. Your neighbor's re- 
quest is irresistibly natural and reasonable. Un- 
less you are a trained casuist you will not hesitate 
to admit her "right" to be heard and counted. 
It will come over you that her sex, while it af- 
fects the amenities and proprieties, has nothing 
to do with the merits of her claim. Has she a 
vital interest in the outcome ? Has she a matured 
opinion? Is she capable of discussion? Then 
what under heaven has her sex to do with it? 
Thus qualified she has made good her title to 
rule among the rest, even though she is a daughter 
of Eve. You will have no difficulty in recalling 
the names of several sons of Adam whose qualifica- 
tions are more doubtful, but whose title is not 
challenged because it has been thought less dan- 
gerous to enfranchise one hundred whose title is 
doubtful than to disfranchise one whose title is 



2i6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

clear. Better excessive liberality than the sus- 
picion of tyranny. 

Out of such reflections as these, if you are 
honest-minded and more concerned with the sub- 
stance than with the form of the thing, there will 
grow a recognition of your neighbor as fellow-cit- 
izen. You will come to see that rights and inter- 
ests and reasoned conviction are neither masculine 
nor feminine. You may even accustom your eyes 
to petticoats at the council-table, and your ear to 
the close succession of the words "votes" and 
** women." The impulse to smile may be forgot- 
ten in an imself-conscious effort to work out the 
common good. You will have found an associa- 
tion of minds and purposes where at first you saw 
only a bit of comedy. And when you meet your 
neighbor in that conference in which she registers 
her will among the rest, you may even have so 
far regained your composure as to be able to re- 
move your hat. 

This, then, is the question. It is a neighbor- 
hood question between one human being and 
another. There are no immutable political axi- 
oms from which it can be argued. All of its re- 
alities, and all of the evidence that is germane 
and decisive are to be found in the concrete situa- 
tion in which human interests and human minds 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 217 

are associated. To grasp the larger and vaguer 
issue, you must reduce it in scale and express it 
in terms of your own immediate commimity. 
"Rights" come into existence when human beings 
assert them and other human beings acknowledge 
them. The rights of women are now in the 
making; they are being generated by the natural 
and irresistible growth of practises and ideas to 
which we have long been committed. You can- 
not deny your neighbor; no man can deny his 
neighbor. In your act of acknowledgment your 
neighbor acquires a right; by such an acknowl- 
edgment repeated a million times, a whole social 
class is enfranchised. 

This is a question between men and women, 
not between Man and Woman. Each individual 
must translate it for himself into terms of his 
own personal relations. Recall to mind the 
wisest and best woman of your acquaintance. 
Forget convention and legalized usage, and re- 
member only that she has interests as genuine as 
yours, purposes as broad and benevolent, and 
opinions that to her seem true even as do yours 
to you. She wishes to participate in the regula- 
tion of public policies in a community that is as- 
smned to be self-governing. She possesses in- 
terests that belong to the community of interests 



2i8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

which government is designed to promote; she 
has opinions and is able to express them, in a 
poUty that is foimded on the principle of gov- 
ernment by discussion and agreement. It hap- 
pens that you enjoy de facto political power and 
that it is only through your consent that she 
can represent her interests and make her opinion 
effective. 

When you present the case to yourself thus 
concretely and personally, are there no senti- 
ments of justice and respect that instantly pre- 
scribe what shaU be your course? Can you in 
the presence of such an individual, conscious of 
her interests, articulate in her judgment, soberly 
demanding what she conceives to be her just 
rights, still wear upon your face that smile with 
which you dispose of the matter in her absence? 

I, for one, cannot. I have no heart for banter 
and pleasantry in the face of conscious and inten- 
tional seriousness. I could not carry it through. 
I should be overtaken with shame at my own 
insolence. Or can you allow yom: face to wear 
the aspect of offended taste ? As for me, I cannot. 
The bathos of it is too intolerable. Can you 
in such a presence enter with conviction upon 
a discussion of the relation of abstract Right to 
abstract Woman? I could not go far without 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 219 

feeling that I was getting pedantic and irrelevant. 
I know so much better what I owe to this woman, 
than I or anybody else knows the ultimate philos- 
ophy of the ballot. Can you deny her from mere 
love of power? If so, you will not admit it. 
Tyranny must nowadays wear a mask. The 
honest tyrant who says, "I have this power and 
I do not choose to divide and reduce it," is ob- 
solete. If he were not we should know how to 
deal with him. But he is masked, and unless we 
look sharp we shall not recognize him. He is 
most beguiling as The Condescending Man. It 
is worth while to know him well in that r61e, for 
thus disguised he is all about us. 

The Condescending Man is the self-conscious 
and self-constituted guardian of woman. If his 
carriage is a little pompous, if he is a little lack- 
ing in the qualities of comradeship, we must for- 
give him that since it comes of the very abundance 
of his virtue. He beams with good-will and with 
gracious tolerance of the foibles of his ward. She 
may even bite and scratch, and he will spoil her. 
She may even protest that she does not want his 
guardianship, and he will forgive her; for how 
can she be expected to know what is good for 
her! He must be patient even when misunder- 



220 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

stood, and must serve even the ungrateful against 
their will. If they but knew, how they would 
thank him ! In the editorial columns of the New 
York Times he is positively magnanimous.^ 
"No upright and decent man desires to with- 
hold from woman any privilege which will bene- 
fit her" — ^^any privilege," mark you ! Could any 
devotion be more perfect? He will go out "into 
the everlasting scrimmage of life" in order that 
she may foster her "charm and tenderness" at 
home, or radiate it in the cloistered schoolroom. 
To argue the disfranchisement of women one 
must deny to the sex as a whole some quality 
with which men are by nature endowed. To ac- 
complish this without arrogance it is necessary 
to make as little as possible of man's prerogative; 
which results in disparaging not only the prerog- 
ative, but also the province for which it qualifies 
him. That which men alone are fitted to do, 
which women are constitutionally incapable of» 
doing, must to a chivalrous mind seem a relatively 
ignoble thing to do. Hence the distinctive mark 
of man is his animal viriHty, and the province 
for which he is fitted is the "/era momia militiai 
and the no less rude task of politics." ^ 

* February 7, 1915. 

* Professor E. K. Rand, in Harper's Weekly, October 30, 1915. 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 221 

But this is to assume that shallow opinion of 
politics by which some of the more fastidious of 
the Virile Animals excuse their own political in- 
dolence. It does not come of reflecting deeply on 
the function of the state or the ethics of citizen- 
ship. Plato, having distinguished between the 
"rudeness" which is "the natural product of the 
spirited element" and the "gentleness" which is 
"a property of the philosophical temperament," 
proposes that "the class of philosophers be in- 
vested with the supreme authority in a state." 
For Plato, in short, the supreme political qualifica- 
tion is not hardiness and daring, but philosophy 
— ^which, whatever its shortcomings, is certainly 
not a display of rude animal virility ! 

Is it not time for us to banish altogether this 
American provincialism, which conceives politics 
as a square-jawed, bull-necked occupation re- 
quiring calloused hands and a strong stomach? 
Can there be any act to which mere animal virility 
is less appropriate than the act of social self- 
government? Is there any act which calls higher 
spiritual qualities into play? Citizenship is a 
matter not for brawn but for brains, not for 
physical, but for moral, courage. It puts a strain 
not on body but on character. It is because I 
know women to possess these essential qualifica- 



222 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

tions for citizenship, and because I know that 
they possess some of them pre-eminently, such as 
humanity and the power to endure, that I can- 
not but concede to women the full rights of 
citizenship. 

PoHtics is discussion and organization for the 
general good. Shall men deny to women partici- 
pation in these matters because men have so con- 
ducted them as to make their purpose obscure and 
their name odious ? The tone of political affairs 
is given to them by the quaHty of those who 
conduct them. The Condescending Man's poor 
opinion of their tone would suggest that they may 
have been left too largely in the hands of Virile 
Animals. Even he would not propose that the 
charm and tenderness which occasionally manifest 
themselves even among men should be regarded 
as excusing them from poHtical Hfe. In short, if 
one is to argue at all from the rudeness of poHtical 
life, the conclusion would be, not that the higher 
humanity should be kept from poUtics, but rather 
that politics should be more highly humanized. 

In these days of rough force The Condescend- 
ing Man stands almost alone in his charity and 
considerate regard. He is benevolent through and 
through, and he doesn't care who knows it. God 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 223 

bless him! No one with a heart in his bosom 
can remain untouched at such a spectacle. It is 
little wonder that many of his grateful wards 
rise up and call him blessed, asking no happier 
lot than to enjoy his protection, his caressing 
kindness, and the light of his infallible wis- 
dom. 

It is ungracious to probe into the motives of a 
benevolence so perfect. Such a task is not will- 
ingly undertaken even by his less inspired fellow 
guardians, who owe him no debt of gratitude. 
But let us shake off the spell, and remember 
as vividly as we can just how it feels to be amiably 
but persistently treated as a ward, when one 
doesn't want to be a ward. Every man has ex- 
perienced the difficulty of getting his majority 
acknowledged by those who have long regarded 
him as a child. There comes a time in every 
man's life when what he wants is not indulgence 
or even provident care, but independence. This 
painful struggle, the inevitable and recurrent 
tragedy of father and son, is not a struggle over 
benefits withheld or bestowed, but over the right 
to judge what are benefits. An adult is a person 
who is the acknowledged authority as to what he 
himself wants. He is willing to forfeit good-will 
or even good deeds, for the sake of being allowed 



2 24 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

to say for himself what is good. Such relations 
and such struggles occur in every association of 
older and younger men. There comes a time 
sooner or later when benevolent paternalism is 
unduly prolonged, and becomes an intolerable 
restraint upon liberty. When such is the case 
the benevolent patron is in danger of having 
his feelings hurt. His misguided and belated 
providence can no longer be gratefully ac- 
cepted, but must be firmly and regretfully over- 
thrown. 

Something of this sort, I take it, is involved in 
the present painful misunderstanding between 
some men and some women. There are women 
who beheve that they are grown up, and who 
are trying to get the fact acknowledged. They 
are not seeking what is good for them, but they 
would Hke to be regarded as competent to de- 
cide what is good for them. Their most formid- 
able obstacle is the man who is quite firmly con- 
vinced that he knows what is good for them. 
His intentions are good, and his habits of mind, 
inherited from the usage of the past, are quite 
inflexible. There arises the painful necessity of 
disregarding his good intentions, or even of re- 
senting them in order to gain the main pomt. 
He on his part will find his habits of mind im- 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 225 

suited to the new relationship, and will cling to 
them in order to avoid awkwardness and loss of 
dignity. He will inevitably feel abused that his 
good intentions should not have been deemed 
sufficient. 

At the risk of further injury to his feelings let 
us examine a little more closely into the motives 
of The Condescending Man. I do not want to 
be cynical — ^but why does he so insist upon his 
benevolence, even when it is so ungratefully re- 
ceived ? Is it possible that there is some satis- 
faction in the provident care of dependents, and 
that he becomes aware of it, and clings to it at 
the moment when he is about to lose it ? I strongly 
suspect that such is the case. Indeed upon care- 
ful introspection I am sure of it. A benign gra- 
ciousness reciprocated by an attitude of grateful 
and trusting dependence and pervaded by a 
thoroughly good conscience, distils one of the 
most delicious of pleasures — a pleasure not to be 
abandoned without a struggle. It exists in forms 
far subtler than the rough triumph of a Petruchio; 
but it requires that Katharine shall be tamed and 
shall remain so. This same exquisite sentiment 
inspires those who regret the passing of the "good 
servant." This departed blessing is a creature 
grateful for the advantages of "a refined home" 



226 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

(even though it happens to be somebody else's 
home) and content to receive benefits selected 
and doled out by her acknowledged superiors. 
In the golden age of patronage men could patron- 
ize domesticated women while these in turn could 
exercise their benevolence upon domesticated 
servants. And now the outlook for all patrons 
is bad, owing to the wide-spread and growing 
dislike of being patronized. 

The Condescending Man is fond of his con- 
descension. He cannot bear to give it up. He 
resists a change that will rob it of his object. 
The good old practise of deciding what is good 
for other people, of prescribing it and spooning 
it out with kindly smiles is in grave danger. It 
cannot possibly be carried on unless there is a 
being at hand who will open her mouth, swallow 
her sugared dose, and look pleased while she does 
it. It is a highly gratifying thing to exchange de- 
scending benevolence with ascending gratitude. 
The downward slant of condescension must en- 
counter the upward inclination of dependence. 
Otherwise it has no fulcrum and can only waste 
itself in space. The horizontal interchange of 
friendship isn't the same thing at all. Hence The 
Condescending Man quite naturally, too natur- 
ally, goes about praising and promoting the ob- 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 227 

ject which he needs for the exercise of his con- 
descension. 



I have tried to do justice to The Condescend- 
ing Man, and to give him due credit for his good 
intentions. But I feel compelled to admit that 
he sometimes appears in a less amiable light. He 
has even been known to hint strongly that his 
indulgent care for women is a sort of compensa- 
tion to them for their lack of political power. 
If they prefer to possess political power, then 
they must make up their minds to give up their 
immunity from military service and jury duty, 
their dower rights, their legal claims to support 
and to alimony, and the protection of their 
health by special factory laws. "Equal rights, 
equal duties," says our editorial friend,^ by 
way of showing that even The Condescending 
Man can be firm if it should prove neces- 
sary. 

It might have been supposed that these "priv- 
ileges" of women were based upon differences of 
physical strength and aptitude; and upon the pe- 
culiar services which women render to society by 
the bearing and rearing of children, and by the 
immediate care of the home. These have some- 

* New York Times, February 28, 1915. 



228 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

times been regarded as duties quite "equal" to 
fighting and bread-winning. In that case the 
formula would have to be amended to read "equal 
rights, identical duties/' which is somewhat less 
axiomatic. In any case the principle of benev- 
olence is here abandoned for that of bargaining. 
And the bargain is proposed by the party that 
has the upper hand and believes itself to be in 
a position to dictate terms. Condescension is 
here prescribing conditions, as though one were 
to say: "I will give you what I think is good for 
you, but only provided you will accept certain 
existing disabilities — I will give freely, but you 
must pay for it." 

Similarly, a defender of the privileges of men 
has proposed the inverted sentiment: "No rep- 
resentation without taxation." Since women as 
a class are too frail to bear the burdens of poHtics 
and war, they "should not have the right to vote 
about them." But one who employs this argu- 
ment either has an inadequate conception of 
politics and war or he has an inadequate concep- 
tion of the public service of women. Since his 
chivalry acquits him of the latter, we must con- 
vict him of the former. He is betrayed, I think, 
by a conventional and antiquated conception of 
politics and war. That he regards politics under 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 229 

its superficial and local aspect, and confuses its 
abuses with its uses, we have already found 
reason to suspect. If he were to remind himself 
that politics is concerted action for the public 
interest, he would find it less incongruous with 
his conception of womanliness. 

Similarly he appears to identify war with the 
shock of arms, despite the fact that recent events 
have relegated this idea to the class of picture-book 
anachronisms. War is the organization and mobi- 
lization of a nation's resources. War is the care 
of fatherless children; war is food and clothing, 
science and invention, nursing and sanitation, di- 
plomacy and Uterature. When war is thus con- 
ceived the participation of women is not ques- 
tionable at all. They do participate. Their loyalty 
is stanch, their industry unremitting, and their 
burden more heavy than the most generous man 
has ever fully acknowledged. There is only one 
symbol of civil rights, one instrument of politi- 
cal autonomy — the vote. There are a thousand 
forms of service, equally burdensome. The day 
has passed when it can be lightly said that 
women are to be denied the former on the ground 
that they do not assume a proportionate share of 
the latter. 

I fear that The Condescending Man's code of 



230 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

manners, like his code of morals, is also tainted 
with the spirit of barter. There are rumors that 
if women enjoy too many privileges he may feel 
compelled to sit in their presence with his hat 
on, by way of showing that the bargain is off. 
That is to say, courtesy rests on a tacit contract 
by which the recipient is bound to give up more 
substantial advantages in return. "Ladies First" 
means that women are to be given precedence in 
non-essentials on the understanding that they 
yield it in essentials. They may sit in the draw- 
ing-room or even the tram-car, provided they 
will confine themselves to the gallery in the hall 
of legislation. Such is the code of The Conde- 
scending Man. Now it is interesting to note, 
as a curious social phenomenon, that some men 
in some parts of the world even practise courtesy 
to one another! This sometimes goes even to 
the point of the removal of hats and the yielding 
of precedence in doorways and conversations. I 
am not sure that men do not sometimes offer 
their chairs to other men, even where there is 
no acknowledged inequality. I note this fact 
because it suggests that courtesy might similarly 
be extended to women even after their attainment 
of equal rights. But such a code cannot be 
reconciled with the philosophy of The Conde- 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 231 

scending Man, and I do not blame him for dis- 
regarding it. 

Such, then, is the first and most formidable 
obstacle to the attempt of women to acquire 
political power. The second obstacle is a product 
of the attempt itself, less formidable because es- 
sentially artificial and accidental. I refer to The 
Obstructive Woman. When this matter began 
to be agitated it was natural and proper to ask 
whether any considerable number of women ac- 
tually wanted to vote. In other words, it was 
very generally assumed that a right of this sort 
should be acknowledged when it was earnestly 
and persistently and widely asserted. What was 
required first of all was an expression of opinion. 
It was desirable that those women who did not 
wish to vote should say so, and that they should 
even organize in order that such a disinclination 
should be brought to light wherever it existed. 
In canvassing opinion it is important to count 
the "noes'* as well as the "ayes." But organiza- 
tion and counter-organization has developed a 
contest in which the natural human desire to 
win has brought about an unconscious but very 
significant alteration of motives. The pro-suffrage 
organizations still represent as they did at the be- 



232 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

ginning the desire of some women to vote. But 
the anti-suffrage organizations no longer repre- 
sent merely their members' disinclination to vote, 
but a determination that those who are so in- 
clined shall not succeed. Their first platform 
was: "We do not want it"; their present plat- 
form is: "They shall not have it." Hence The 
Obstructive Woman. 

"Anti-suffrage" sounds like "anti- vivisection," 
and is therefore misleading. It suggests that 
suffrage is something like vivisection, which is 
at least painful and injurious to its victims, and 
that opposition to it is dictated by a misguided 
chivalry or sentimentality. So hard is it to be- 
lieve that any body of persons would expend 
great effort to no end but that of obstruction. 
"Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage" sounds 
like "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals." A visitor from Mars would not im- 
naturally suppose that "Woman Suffrage" was 
some form of disease or social abuse, which tender- 
hearted and public-spirited persons were resolved 
to suppress. What would be his surprise to learn 
that it was a boon, a privilege, eagerly craved by 
the only persons immediately affected, and op- 
posed by other persons whose will no one is pro- 
posing to constrain ! It is as though the unmusical 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 233 

should organize for the prevention of concerts 
among the musical, or the indifferent should 
announce their opposition to the fulfilment of 
desire. 

That Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, President of 
the National Association Opposed to Woman 
Suffrage, should not want to vote is proper 
enough, but not especially significant. That 
Miss Katharine B. Davis, Commissioner of Cor- 
rection in New York City, and head of a depart- 
ment numbering between six and seven hundred 
voters, should not be allowed to vote, despite 
her wish to do so, is highly significant. It is a 
sharp challenge to existing political usage in the 
name of the existing political creed. But that 
Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge should seek to prevent 
Miss Katharine B. Davis from voting is pre- 
posterous. It would be incredible if it were not 
the familiar fact. It can only be accounted for 
by supposing that what is essentially obstruc- 
tion is warmed by the passion for victory and 
idealized by the sentiment of loyalty. Obstruc- 
tion has acquired the dignity of a Cause. 

The Obstructive Woman is a disquieting so- 
cial and political phenomenon, and complicates 
what would otherwise be a comparatively simple 
issue. I may say at once that I should be wholly 



234 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

opposed to compelling The Obstructive Woman 
to vote. Fortunately, that is not contemplated. 
To some, however, it might seem a doubtful 
policy to permit her to vote. Certainly her will 
in this matter, her impulse to oppose rather than 
to promote, her inexplicable preference of a man- 
ger when there are other equally good beds to lie 
on — this does tend to disqualify her. In her 
present mood she is obviously unsuited to the 
temper of democratic institutions. I do not 
despair of her, however. She has acquired val- 
uable political experience, and has demonstrated 
her possession of political aptitude. She is both 
able and willing to make her voice heard, and to 
render her will effective. That she should have 
devoted these gifts to obstruction rather than 
construction, to repression rather than liberty, 
may fairly be regarded as an accident. The very 
fatuousness of her efforts is a sign of her courage 
and resolution, of her love of power and of her 
determination to see a thing through when she 
has once undertaken it. I believe that she has 
proved her capacity for citizenship, and that when 
the present confusion of motives is dispelled, after 
the struggle is over, she will take her place nobly 
among the rest. I hope, therefore, that even 
The Obstructive Woman will not be disfranchised. 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 235 

It is argued, I know, that The Obstructive 
Woman is not merely obstructive, that she has 
her own ideals and conception of good. In 
particular she regards herself as the protagonist 
of the family and the domestic virtues, and claims 
the right to be left to her own "sphere." This 
solicitude for the family is commendable, but is 
wasteful of good, righteous feeling. PoUtics 
need no more draw women from the nursery 
than men from the ditch. Since women must 
bear and rear children, and men must feed and 
clothe them, women have an equal leisure for 
citizenship, and at least an equal schooling for it. 

Furthermore, the removal of arbitrary re- 
strictions upon the exercise of political power 
means freedom and fair play for all ideals. The 
only grievance that remains is the uncongenial 
task of acquiring familiarity with public affairs 
and the labor of going to the polls; which is, I 
think, to match an annoyance against an injustice. 
Furthermore, by their present attitude anti- 
suffrage women condemn themselves to a task 
that is equally laborious, and which must be 
more uncongenial. For it is a task of opposition 
and repression. It involves all the ordinary 
agencies of political action, but directs them to 
the stifling of legitimate aspiration. And unless 



236 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 

the whole spirit of our institutions is altered, it 
is a hopeless task. For the motive which they 
seek to oppose is that irrepressible motive of 
liberty and equality which finds in democracy 
its proper soil and native air. 

The Condescending Man and The Obstructive 
Woman are the two most interesting by-products 
of this latest poHtical revolution. They are 
characteristic of the phase of struggle and read- 
justment. They become innocuous the moment 
they are seen to be what they are. Meanwhile 
they exert power because they obscure the simpler 
issue and muddle the minds of well-meaning per- 
sons. Their strongest ally is that peculiar nervous 
irritability which we proudly acknowledge as 
"the American sense of humor.'' It is an al- 
most irresistible impulse to giggle at superficial 
absurdities and ignore the deeper tragic forces 
that are working beneath. It testifies to an un- 
canny instinct for the incongruous and its al- 
most morbid fascination for us. But though the 
incongruous be comic, the incongruity of the 
comic itself — laughter out of place — is not comic. 
There is nothing more painful, more empty, or 
more blind. Fortunately the impulse to laugh 
is inhibited by direct personal relations. It 



THE CONDESCENDING MAN 237 

needs to merge and hide itself in the crowd. 
Hence the realities of this issue are most soberly 
as well as most clearly presented in the confronta- 
tion of the individual with his neighbor. It be- 
hooves every one who would judge wisely and 
fairly to observe them there. One may then 
transfer to women at large those attitudes of 
tolerance and respect, and those relations of 
fellow service and common will, which constitute 
the only tolerable bond between one adult human 
being and another. 



